


Keep the Car Running, Part II

by earlgreytea68



Series: KtCR [4]
Category: Inception (2010), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-04-02 16:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 77,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4067353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you deal with all these mind palaces? Well, Arthur has a PASIV...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's Part II! The first chapter was posted at the end of Part I as a preview, and I'm posting it here again, and then posting the new second chapter. This has been a beast of a thing to write because my goodness, S3 Sherlock is *super* *angsty* *wow.* So...yeah. 
> 
> Thank you to arctacuda for gentle nudging and editing in the midst of the crazy of her life; to knackorcraft for unfailing cheerleading and help in the midst of the crazy of *her* life; and to both of them for letting me babble about my plot difficulties. I'VE ALMOST GOT IT FIGURED OUT.

_Part II: Depending on Your Focus: Magnussen, or Sherlock & John_

Chapter 1

“Look at you,” said Eames, exhausted, tumbling into bed. “You didn’t even reach for your gun. I could have been anyone. I could have been an intruder.” 

“I knew you weren’t,” Arthur yawned. “Tate didn’t bark.”

“I could have been an intruder with peanut butter,” Eames said. “That dog is a tart.” 

“Welcome home,” said Arthur sleepily, and snuggled into him. “How was the flight?” 

“Didn’t crash.” 

“You smell like an airplane.” 

“Tell me about it.” 

“And also like chocolate milk.” 

“That’s an interesting story, but I’ve been in, like, five different time zones in the past four days, so I’ll tell you in the morning.” 

“You haven’t been lying to me about this job being a cakewalk and it was actually awful and now I need to put out hits on yet another stupid fucking incompetent team for you, have you?” demanded Arthur, sounding more awake than Eames would have liked. 

“You realize your tendency to try to kill people is the reason why I’d have to lie to you in the first place,” said Eames drily. 

“Yes, I’m a horrible person who wants to _keep you alive_.” 

“The job was fine. I’m just tired because I got back here to you as quickly as I could, and the airports are all a mess, and do you really think I could effectively lie to you anymore?” Because Eames couldn’t resist calling Arthur at least every day, just to hear his voice (which was only bearable because Arthur did the same, whenever they took jobs that separated them). It had been nearly a year, a Year of Arthur, and still Eames couldn’t resist calling him every day, relishing the fact that not only could he do that but that Arthur expected and welcomed it. And Eames called Arthur more when the jobs were frustrating and he needed to vent, and he wouldn’t have been able to resist snarling at Arthur if the job had been a disaster. 

“You could never lie to me,” Arthur pointed out confidently. 

“That’s what you always _thought_ ,” said Eames, pressing his nose into Arthur’s dear neck and inhaling Arthur’s familiar sleep-scent and thinking how glorious it was to be _home_. To have a place to call home, actually, and to have it be wherever this astonishing man was. Eames’s hand still itched for his totem, just to check. “That’s what I wanted you to think.” Eames settled, feeling the tension from the travel leak away from him as he fit himself around Arthur with effortless instinct. 

“Uh-huh.” Arthur’s hand came up and brushed through Eames’s hair, and Eames made an embarrassing noise of helpless approval. “And I totally let you think that.” Arthur’s lips made an appearance against his head, and then he said, “Sex later?” 

“Sex later,” agreed Eames. “I couldn’t even stay awake for sex now.” 

“I don’t really need for you to be awake,” said Arthur, lips dipping down across Eames’s temple, hands dipping down toward other places, and Eames thought that it _had_ been an incredibly long time since he’d had Arthur’s hands and not just the pixels of them over Skype.

“You’re actually the world’s most insulting person and I missed you like crazy,” Eames told him, and suddenly tackled him back onto the bed. 

“I thought you said sex later,” said Arthur, and dimpled up at him, and Eames’s heart thudded the way it still did, every single time, tipping right over at Arthur’s feet. 

“Yeah. I lied to you,” said Eames. “Still got it.”

“I hate you,” said Arthur. 

“Oh, darling, I know,” said Eames, with a grin, before he made it his own personal mission to get Arthur to admit that no, actually, he really, really loved him. 

Eames was very good at that particular mission. 

***

Eames woke to bright sunshine and Tate in Arthur’s spot in the bed. 

“Morning,” Eames yawned at him, and Tate wagged his fluffy little tail and pounced onto Eames’s chest, and Eames covered him with kisses because Arthur wasn’t around to see that yes, Eames spoiled the dog. 

Tate settled down, and Eames scratched behind his ears and looked up at the Titian over the bed. The placement had been Arthur’s idea, because Arthur had a devious streak that Eames hadn’t previously suspected. Eames had consented only because he liked the idea of being extravagant enough to have priceless art on their ceiling, but he’d told Arthur the first time he was called _Titian_ in bed the thing was coming down. 

Which meant Eames was almost always called _Titian_ in bed these days, and he’d developed a bloody Pavlovian response to the name.

Eames rolled himself out of bed and went in search of Arthur or coffee. He dragged himself through the small living room, where his first Paris painting of Arthur hung over the fireplace, because Arthur insisted it wasn’t redundant to have a painting of Paris in a flat in Paris. The door to their tiny balcony was propped open and a breeze was coming in, giving away Arthur’s location, so Eames paused for coffee first. There was a fresh pot in the kitchen, and Eames called out, “Bless you, darling!” 

“I didn’t sneeze!” Arthur called back. 

“For the _coffee_ , pet,” Eames clarified, pouring himself a cup, and it was halfway to his mouth, the first glorious sip almost there…

And then he spotted the Kandinsky, propped up against the kitchen counter. 

Eames blinked at it, and then he stumbled his way onto their balcony. “There’s a Kandinsky in our kitchen,” he told Arthur. 

“Is there?” said Arthur, and filled in a word in the crossword puzzle he was doing. 

“ _Arthur_.” 

“Happy birthday,” Arthur said, and looked up at him, beaming with pride at his own ingenuity. “Slightly belated. Sorry we missed it.” 

Eames shook his head to show how much that didn’t matter. Arthur’s last job had run over and interfered with Eames’s birthday, and Arthur had obviously felt awful about it even though Eames hadn’t cared and even though it clearly hadn’t been Arthur’s fault since Arthur’s jobs almost always ran like clockwork. And it was Eames who had had another job scheduled that had overlapped with the end of Arthur’s, and altogether it had been far too long since they had been in the same place at the same time. Eames thought he’d needed no bonus on the perfection of his current morning, and Arthur was _amazing_ for having arranged such a bonus. “Is it a forgery, or stolen, or legally purchased?” he asked. 

“I thought you’d prefer to figure that out on your own,” said Arthur. 

“ _Madame_ Fouchard, kindly turn around, I’m going to give my boyfriend a blow job right here on this balcony!” Eames shouted to their neighbor. 

“ _Bonjour, monsieur_!” she called back happily, because she didn’t speak a word of English.

Eames didn’t drop to his knees, though. He leaned forward and gave Arthur a kiss. Just a kiss. Because he was _Arthur_ , and Eames loved him so much that he was dizzy with it, even on mornings when Arthur didn’t surprise him with Kandinskys (fake or otherwise) over coffee. 

And Arthur kissed him back, in that miraculous way he had, that way of saying, _Yes, I love you, too_. 

“Best gift ever,” Eames mumbled, and didn’t really mean the Kandinsky. “Thank you, darling.”

“You’re welcome. I’m glad you like it.”

“I don’t like it, I _love_ it.” 

“Even better,” Arthur smiled. “Now sit down and have your coffee. Look, I ran out and got you a croissant, too.” 

“Being home is the _best_ ,” said Eames happily, as he sat and ate his croissant and pretended he didn’t slip bits to Tate. Arthur tipped his chair back and worked on his crossword puzzle and pretended not to see him slipping bits to Tate. 

“Are you awake now?” Arthur asked him eventually, setting his chair down on all four legs and putting his crossword puzzle aside. 

“I’ve been awake,” said Eames, poking a toe underneath the cuff of Arthur’s trousers so he could see what socks Arthur was wearing. 

“You’re never awake until after your first cup of coffee,” Arthur said. “I try to have conversations with you before your first cup of coffee, and you never remember them.” 

“That’s because they’re usually conversations about bloody dry cleaning, darling.” 

“You’re really a terrible person,” said Arthur. “I like it much better when you’re not home.” 

“But then who will drive you wild with lust until you’re begging to come?” asked Eames loudly, and Madame Fouchard waved cheerfully at him. 

“Would you stop in your attempt to teach our French neighbor English words only about sex?” 

“No, actually, because I like it.” He raised his voice. “Why, yes, darling, the lube _is_ hidden in the window box.” 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Listen up, Titian.” 

“Oho, playing dirty now, are we?” 

“I’m always playing dirty, you just caught up. I got a call from an old friend.”

“Is it Saito? Because he pays well.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” said Arthur. 

Eames blinked. “Sherlock Holmes. Huh. What’s he want?” 

“He has a job for us.” 

“Christ, no.” 

“Eames.” 

“No, no, no.” Eames shook his head. “Arthur, that job was a fucking disaster and we’re lucky we’re alive. Absolutely not.” 

“Fine,” said Arthur. “You’re right. Of course you are. You don’t have to do it.” 

Eames looked at him. “ _I_ don’t have to do it?” 

Arthur fiddled with the mug that Eames knew had held hot chocolate that morning and said, “I owe him.” 

“You owe _him_? For what?” The idea boggled Eames’s mind. 

Arthur met his eyes. “He told me to tell you,” he said, simply. 

Eames looked at Arthur, whose hair was tumbled in loose waves and who was dressed in a T-shirt. A ridiculously expensive T-shirt, yes, but still just a T-shirt. Arthur, who looked not at all at the moment like the best point man in dreamsharing but just looked like a man eating breakfast with his boyfriend. They were sitting on their balcony with a table between them on which they’d eaten fresh croissants Arthur had run out to get, coffee Arthur had made for Eames because Arthur never drank coffee at home. He looked at their dog snoozing in the sun, at the living room beyond, with Arthur’s coffee table books on architecture and fashion and Eames’s dog-eared paperbacks. And he’d woken in their rumpled bed, well-shagged and comfortable in a way he’d never have thought possible, relaxed, _happy_. He’d woken up with a _home_ , which he’d never had before and had never even bothered to imagine. And he’d woken up with the knowledge of _Arthur_ , somewhere nearby and waiting for him, waiting to kiss him good morning, which he _had_ imagined but still couldn’t _believe_. Arthur, who procured him Kandinskys and croissants and coffees. Arthur, whose dimples used to be such a challenge for Eames and now Eames’s mere presence seemed enough to bring them forth. 

Eames rubbed the arch of his foot against Arthur’s calf and he sighed and said, “What does he need help with?” 

“Some guy named Magnussen,” said Arthur. 


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

“Hi,” said Arthur, when the woman opened the door, and smiled his best I-charm-old-ladies smile. Eames loved that smile because its inverse was Arthur’s I-have-no-problem-shooting-your-kneecap smile. 

The woman was not charmed by Arthur’s smile. “Who are you?” she asked bluntly. 

“I’m Arthur,” said Arthur, “and this is Eames.” 

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You look familiar.” 

“We’ve worked with Sherlock before,” Eames contributed helpfully. 

The woman was still studying Arthur, narrow-eyed. 

Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably. 

The woman said, “You’re clients?” 

“Sort of,” said Arthur. 

“Colleagues,” said Eames. 

“Sherlock? Colleagues?” The woman looked intrigued by this. And then, “But oh, my goodness, is he working with you? That is so lovely! I’ve been so worried about him, as you can imagine, since John…” The woman trailed off and gave them both a meaningful look. 

“Right,” said Eames slowly, and looked at Arthur, who just smiled benignly and said, “Is Sherlock in? He’s not answering the doorbell.” 

“He never does. You can go up if you like.” She waved a hand toward the staircase. 

“Crack security,” Eames muttered as they climbed the stairs together. 

“Says the man whose security at his Bangkok apartment was a skeleton key from 1912.” 

“First of all, you’ve made that year up, you don’t know it was from that year.” 

“I researched it, and it’s a roughly accurate estimate.” 

“Second of all, you do know that the fact that your security systems usually involve _lasers_ like you’re living in some bloody _art museum_ isn’t normal.” 

“Had to keep you out,” Arthur said breezily, and stuck his head into 221B and called, “Sherlock?” 

There was no answer. 

“I break into museums every day.” 

“No, you don’t.” Arthur walked past Eames, tapping cursorily on the bedroom door before sticking his head in. 

“It’s a figure of speech. How does that woman know you?” 

“I kicked down her door once. I’d rather not remind her and see if she carries a grudge.” Arthur walked past him again, back into the sitting room. 

Eames followed, interested. “Why did you kick down her door?” 

“Because the idiot I’d decided to fall in love with was behaving like an idiot, which was predictable, since he’s an idiot.” 

“Petal, stop, please, you know I can’t handle your sentimental effusion.” 

Arthur sat in the leather chair by the fireplace and pulled out his phone. 

Eames said, “So that’s it? We’re just going to wait around here? Didn’t you tell him we were coming?” 

“I emailed him. He didn’t reply, but that’s not unusual, he’s an unreliable email correspondent.”

“You think people are unreliable email correspondents if they don’t use capital letters.” 

“Because they are,” said Arthur, frowning down at his phone. 

“What did she mean about John down there?”

“I have no idea. Looking it up now.” 

“You didn’t bother to do that research before you got here? The world has shifted on its axis.” 

“I researched Magnussen. I didn’t research _Sherlock_. I thought I knew Sherlock.” 

“Darling, it might be true that all of the really good sex is making you soft. I always worried about that. You were a better point when you weren’t getting laid regularly.” 

“You realize that there are two of us having sex, and if I have less sex you have less sex,” noted Arthur, without even bothering to look up from his phone. 

“Think they have coffee here?” said Eames, heading into the kitchen. 

“Changing the subject. Good idea, Titian,” Arthur called after him. 

“You are a smug, insufferable prick, and you’re lucky you look good in suits,” Eames muttered into a cupboard that seemed, alarmingly, to be full of toenails in plastic bags. 

“What was that?” asked Arthur. 

“I said you’re the light of my life,” Eames answered and poked through the next cupboard, which held a variety of severely rotted vegetables. 

“Mmm, I thought that’s what you said. He got married.” 

Eames glanced over at Arthur, where he’d entered the kitchen, still frowning down at his phone. “Hmm? What? Who? What do you think this is?” Eames held up some kind of plastic-wrapped item. 

Arthur peered at it briefly. “Looks like dead slugs. Why are you looking through their cupboards?”

Eames wrinkled his nose at the dead slugs. “I’m looking for coffee. Also, I’m a thief. It’s instinct to see if there’s anything worth stealing.”

“Well, stop it. That’s creepy.”

“Not hot?” 

“Not hot. John got married.” 

“John?” Eames closed the cupboard door. “John who?” 

“John Watson.” Arthur turned his phone and Eames found himself looking at a photo of John Watson in obvious wedding gear. Standing next to Sherlock, attired the same.

“Aww,” said Eames, and reached for the phone. “They got married?”

“Zoom out,” said Arthur. 

Eames did. And frowned. “He married a woman?” 

“We’re clear on the fact that if you marry a woman I will find you and carve out your kidney without anesthesia, right?” 

“Yeah,” agreed Eames absently. “Always been clear on that. Why would he marry a woman?”

“Probably because he loves her. That’s why people get married, Eames.” Arthur said it very patiently, like Eames was an idiot. 

Eames glowered at him as he gave him back his phone. “He was in love with Sherlock. I know he was. We had a heart-to-heart over it.”

Arthur lifted his eyebrows. “Did you now?”

“Over being in love with unattainable men.” 

Arthur looked vaguely offended. “I am not unattainable.” 

Eames grinned at him and tucked his fingers into Arthur’s pockets and used them to nudge him forward. “No, you turned out to be attainable as fuck.” 

“Charming,” said Arthur, wearing that look he wore when he was trying to pretend he didn’t think Eames was adorable. Eames knew that look well. 

Eames grinned wider. “I’m really good with words, I’m told.”

“No, I said you were really good with your mouth. I didn’t mean ‘words’ at all.” 

Eames laughed because Arthur was delightful, and he probably would have kissed him except that they both heard the door downstairs open. 

“Sherlock?” Eames guessed. 

“Probably. Don’t bring up the John thing.” Arthur extricated Eames’s hands from his pockets and stuck his phone into it. “He’s probably sensitive about it.” 

Eames wanted to point out that he wasn’t an uncaring fool, but there wasn’t time so he just agreed, “Yeah.” 

Arthur went to the flat’s door at the same moment that it opened up to reveal Mycroft. 

Mycroft scowled at them. “What are _you_ doing here?” 

“We’re not any happier to see you,” responded Eames. “Unless you know where the coffee is here.” 

“What are you doing here?” Arthur asked, as calm and unruffled as always. 

“This is my brother’s flat,” said Mycroft, and then apparently didn’t feel the need to explain any further. 

“Well, at least you know that much,” said Eames. 

“Why are you two here?” asked Mycroft, with a sour look to him, as if he’d just bit into a lemon. “Must you sell your services door to door these days?” 

“Just dropped by for a visit,” Arthur said lightly, and leaned against the kitchen counter and steadfastly did not mention that Sherlock had asked them to come. 

“We’re a very friendly sort,” Eames added. “Like to check up on pals from previous jobs. It’s like a reunion tour.” 

Mycroft looked very unamused, which Eames considered a triumph. “Are you enjoying your sojourn as the first couple of crime?” 

“We’re hardly that,” said Arthur. 

“No, I like it,” said Eames. “Which of us is Bonnie and which of us is Clyde?” 

“There’s an entire list of crimes you should really be worrying about before you worry about dreamsharing,” Arthur said, reaching into his coat for his moleskine. 

“You still owe Arthur a suit, by the way,” said Eames. 

Mycroft looked surprised. “A suit? For what?”

“A suit from Savile Row. It was part of our deal and you never paid up, and Arthur’s really sad about that because he’s only got 99 suits and he really likes round numbers.” 

Arthur ripped a page out of his moleskine, still ignoring Eames steadily with that talent he had for it, and handed it to Mycroft. 

Mycroft shifted from surprise to startlement. “What’s this?” 

“My list of crimes you should be worrying about before you worry about dreamsharing.” 

“Arthur is always literal when it comes to list-keeping,” Eames told him. 

Mycroft lifted his eyebrows at the list of crimes and then said, “I may have owed you a Savile Row suit but I’ve allowed you to keep a Titian, so I think we’ll call it even, don’t you?” 

“What makes you think we have a Titian?” asked Eames innocently. 

“The fact that he’s your favorite painter,” Mycroft said to Arthur drily. 

Arthur said, “Your intel on me is terrible. I like the modernists. Good, sharp, clean lines. Not a lot of fuss.” 

Mycroft lifted his eyebrows. “Says the man wearing three different patterns at once,” he remarked, casting an eye over Arthur. 

“And wearing them well,” said Arthur mildly. “Not like when Eames does it.” 

Mycroft crumpled up Arthur’s list and tossed it to the kitchen table and said, “I haven’t time to quibble over why you’re really here. Name your price for how much it will take for you to go.” 

“Arthur and I are rather flush at the moment,” said Eames. “Made a killing off a government job.” 

Mycroft scowled at them and looked about to say more except that the door opened downstairs. 

Mycroft turned, and Sherlock shouted up the stairs to him, “Really, Mycroft? _Really_?” 

“Well then, Sherlock,” Mycroft called down mildly. “Back on the sauce?” 

Eames looked at Arthur, half-surprised and half-confused. Arthur was in work-mode, impassive and unreadable, leaned against the kitchen counter and taking in everything that was happening. Eames appreciated Arthur in work-mode and also found it unbearably hot, which was the reason, Arthur said, they couldn’t work together more. 

“What are you doing here?” they could hear Sherlock’s voice pouting, his steps on the stairs. 

“I phoned him.” John’s voice, thought Eames. At least he was still around, despite his marriage. 

Although, Eames considered, and cut his eyes back toward Arthur and recalled how panicked he’d used to be that the next time he’d run into Arthur, Arthur would have found some gorgeous thing who realized he walked on water, and Eames would have missed his chance entirely and then Eames would have ended up a Somnacin addict somewhere, living entirely in dreams, and actually, it turned out that nothing that was happening here was the least bit surprising to Eames. Had they known John was married before they’d arrived, they would have reached these conclusions already. Possibly Arthur’s rapid-fire strategizing brain had realized all this as soon as he’d called up the photo on his phone. 

“The siren call of old habits,” said Mycroft, voice still as dry as the desert. “How very like Uncle Rudy. Though, in many ways, cross-dressing would have been a wiser path for you.” 

“You phoned him,” said Sherlock flatly, sulkily, accusingly. 

“Of course I bloody phoned him,” John retorted. 

“Of course he bloody did,” Mycroft agreed sharply. “Now save me a little time. Where should we be looking? And why do you have two criminals in your kitchen?” 

“What?” said John’s voice. 

Sherlock said, sounding a bit brighter and a little pleased, “Really?” and then he practically bounced his way into the kitchen. He looked…a mess. Not at all as sleek and put-together and somewhat Arthurian as he had looked during their previous job. He looked like he had just rolled his way out of a nap in a trash bin somewhere. 

Eames glanced at Arthur, whose eyebrows were elegantly raised at Sherlock’s appearance, and then said, “Hello. We were in the area. Thought we’d drop in and say hello.” 

John followed Sherlock in, blinking at them. And then he said, “Okay, look, good to see you and all, but this is a bad time—”

“It is _not_ a bad time,” Sherlock cut in furiously. 

“You’re a celebrity these days, Sherlock,” Mycroft told him. “You can’t afford a drug habit.” 

“I do not _have_ a drug habit,” Sherlock sulked, and strode through the kitchen to collapse into the leather chair in front of the fireplace. 

“Hey, what happened to my chair?” asked John suddenly. 

“ _Priorities_ , John,” sighed Mycroft, long-suffering. 

“You were gone. I saw an opportunity.” Sherlock shrugged a bit, curling himself onto the chair. 

“No, you saw the kitchen,” John retorted. 

“As fascinating as this all is,” said Eames, “I’m still stalled on trying to find the coffee.” 

“Oh, it’s—” John opened a cupboard, then paused and looked back at Sherlock. “Where’s the coffee?” 

“Oh, it’s over there now.” Sherlock waved vaguely. 

John frowned and turned back to Arthur and Eames. “Seriously, do you think you could go and come back another day?”

“That’s Sherlock’s call,” said Arthur, looking almost disinterested in the entire scenario.

“They’re staying,” Sherlock said firmly. “I’m giving them your old room.” 

News to Eames. He blinked at Sherlock and then at Arthur, who was continuing to work and appear unsurprised by anything happening. 

“You’re what?” said John, almost in unison with Mycroft. 

“Does this have to do with your recent resurgent substance abuse?” asked Mycroft. “Turning to a further life of crime? Or does it have to do with Somnacin?” 

“We’re not drug dealers,” Arthur said, his clear indignation a rare sign of emotion. 

“It doesn’t have to do with drugs, or committing a crime, or anything. It’s all for a _case_.” 

“What case could possibly justify this?” asked Mycroft. 

“Magnussen,” said Sherlock. 

Mycroft straightened perceptibly, and the air in the kitchen shifted. Eames glanced at Arthur, who had actually narrowed his eyes at Mycroft a little bit, an unusual outward tell. 

Sherlock’s smile was viciously triumphant. “Charles Augustus Magnussen.” He said the name with flourish, rolling it over his tongue. 

There was heavy silence in the kitchen. Eames tried to watch everybody at once. And then Mycroft said coldly, without taking his eyes off of Sherlock, “Eames and Arthur, I am through asking nicely, you need to leave now.” 

Eames lifted his eyebrows, because it wasn’t like he and Arthur got ordered around. He glanced at Arthur, who looked singularly unimpressed. 

“They’re not going anywhere. I called them here to help me deal with Magnussen,” Sherlock snapped at Mycroft. 

“Magnussen is not your business,” said Mycroft to Sherlock. 

Sherlock sat up a little straighter, actually looking interested. “Oh, you mean he’s yours?”

Eames cursed his really terrible angle on this conversation, which meant he couldn’t fully see Mycroft’s face. 

“You may consider him under my protection,” Mycroft intoned grandly. 

“I consider you under his thumb,” rejoined Sherlock. 

“If you go against Magnussen, then you will find yourself going against me,” said Mycroft, and it was unmistakably a threat. 

“Okay,” said Sherlock, looking very unimpressed. “I’ll let you know if I notice.” 

Mycroft stiffened, then suddenly turned to Arthur and Eames. “Stay out of this. I’ve been keeping my gaze averted from the two of you. You won’t find it so pleasant if you ignore me on this.” 

“Oh,” said Arthur, as if Mycroft had told him that they drove on the opposite side of the road in England. 

Eames bit on the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing or from kissing Arthur senseless. 

Mycroft looked furious. 

John said, “Look, I’m going to sort through this, I promise, you just…go now.” 

Mycroft turned to him, mouth open. 

“Don’t.” John shook his head. “I will take care of it, you’re just making it worse.” John gestured toward the stairs, clearly an indication that Mycroft should go. 

He cast narrow-eyed looks at everyone before departing. They listened to his steps on the stairs, and then the door closing behind him. 

Then Arthur said sardonically, “I fucking love this country.” 

“I am dying for a cup of coffee,” Eames said. “Seriously.” 

“Shut up,” John snapped at him. Then, “No, don’t shut up. What the bloody hell are you doing here? For real.” 

“ _For real_ ,” said Sherlock, his voice scathing, “they’re here to help me with Magnussen.” 

“Help you do what with Magnussen?” asked John, sounding exasperated. 

“It’s for a case.” 

“What sort of case?” 

“Too big and dangerous for any sane individual to get involved in.” 

“You trying to put me off?” asked John. 

“God, no.” Sherlock grinned at him. “Trying to recruit you.” 

“And what do you need them for?” John gestured toward them. 

“That’s what I’d love to know,” said Arthur. “I have endured this extraordinarily unorthodox start to a job because I owe you, but I don’t work in chaos.”

Sherlock considered him, then said, “Right. I need a bath,” and got up and disappeared into the bathroom.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

John had been having a bad day even before he had stumbled upon Sherlock Holmes in a drug den and dream criminals in a flat that he had been systematically stripped out of. He wasn’t really in the mood for any of this, but he was stuck with it now, so he decided he might as well make coffee for Eames. 

“Tea?” he asked Arthur. “You don’t like coffee, right?” Arthur was standing and regarding him with steady, dark eyes. John was finding it unsettling. Eames at least was roaming through the lounge instead of just _staring_ at him. 

“Congratulations,” said Arthur. 

“Thanks,” said John, confused. “For what?” 

“You got married,” said Arthur. 

“Oh. Right. Yeah. Thanks.” John put the kettle on and turned to the coffee pot. 

Arthur propped his hip against the counter. “How’d you meet her?” 

“Work, actually. She’s a nurse.” 

“Workplace romances are doomed,” Eames called from the lounge. 

“Shut up, Eames,” Arthur called back evenly without taking his gaze off of John. “Moved quickly, didn’t you? Is she pregnant?” 

John dropped the mug he was holding into the sink, where it shattered. “Jesus,” he said. 

“Darling, I keep telling you that you need to develop some tact,” Eames said, appearing in the kitchen doorway. 

“We didn’t get married because she was pregnant,” John said, trying to round up the slivers of mug. “We didn’t know she was pregnant until afterwards.”

“Fuck, I can’t believe you got that right,” Eames complained to Arthur. “You’re like some sort of bloody magician.” 

Arthur smiled a little bit, a ghost of dimple appearing, but he still didn’t take his eyes off of John. “Well, congratulations again, then. Exciting time, isn’t it? Lots going on. Lots to do. Lots to look forward to.” 

John tossed the pieces of mug in the rubbish bin and turned to Arthur in annoyance. “Is there a point to what you’re doing right now?” 

“Just making conversation,” Arthur said innocently. 

“He thinks this is charming,” Eames said. 

“It _is_ charming,” Arthur said, and suddenly turned and fixed Eames with an absolutely dazzling, full-blown grin. John blinked, not sure he’d ever seen Arthur wear that look. Even Eames looked startled, even more startled when Arthur suddenly pulled him in for a kiss. 

John blinked again, feeling awkward and averting his gaze and fiddling with the kettle and then finally saying, “Okay, can that be enough of…that now?” 

“Yes,” Arthur said simply, letting go of Eames and sidestepping out into the lounge like he hadn’t just had his tongue down his throat.

Eames looked a little dazed. John didn’t blame him. 

“So,” he said, clearing his throat and worrying over whether he’d gotten the proportions of milk and tea right for Sherlock’s cuppa. “That seems to be going well.” 

“That…” Eames seemed to pull himself together. “‘Well’ would be the understatement of the century,” he said. “It’s going brilliantly.” 

Eames had the sleek, tickled-pink look of someone who had gotten everything he’d ever asked for. John wondered if he had that look, too. 

“Well,” said John, handing him a cup of coffee. “Here’s to finding happiness in love, yeah?” 

Eames gave him a funny look but said, “Yeah,” and John decided to ignore him. 

“Will Arthur have tea? He never answered me.”

“Hot chocolate, if you have it.” 

“We don’t have hot chocolate,” John admitted. 

“ _I_ have hot chocolate,” announced Sherlock, tramping back into the room and pulling a tin of hot chocolate down from a cupboard. 

John stared at it. “Since when do you buy hot chocolate? You told me it was a waste of time as a chocolate delivery method.” 

“I buy hot chocolate now,” Sherlock said primly, and then marched into the lounge. 

John frowned after him. 

“He probably got it for Arthur,” Eames remarked, and John couldn’t tell if he meant this to be comforting or not. “He knew we were coming.” 

“Yes, but why? Why would he call you to help with a case when I’m right here?” 

Eames arched an eyebrow at him and commenced to making the hot chocolate. 

John didn’t like that arched eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means nothing. I’m sure it’s a case that required dreaming expertise.” Eames moved easily through the kitchen, as if he’d been there a thousand times before, and John kind of hated him for it. “And he’s only switched around little things here and there, it’s not as if he’s changed into a completely different person since the last time you were here.” Eames looked at him, all cherubic innocence. 

John gritted his teeth and carried his and Sherlock’s tea out to the lounge. Sherlock was in his seat and Arthur was at the desk, frowning at his open moleskine and saying, “I think it would actually be pretty standard; I’d just prefer not to be on a rushed timeline.” 

“The longer you’re here, the longer he has to find out that you’re here,” said Sherlock, taking the tea from John without saying thank you, because Sherlock never said thank you, why would he? 

John turned and sat on the sofa, trying not to look like he was visibly fuming, but both Sherlock and Arthur were steadfastly ignoring him, so John supposed it didn’t matter what he was doing. 

Eames came out and set hot chocolate next to Arthur. Arthur _did_ murmur an absent thanks at him, and John glowered a little over criminals having a more functional relationship than him, and then caught himself and reminded himself that Arthur and Eames had a thoroughly _different_ relationship and maybe you should be politer to the person you were shagging. 

Although John thought that wasn’t true. Sherlock _should_ be politer to him considering he’d just dragged him out of a drug den. 

“Have you started already?” Eames asked, leaning briefly over Arthur to peer at his moleskine. “Start over.”

“How much has Arthur told you?” Sherlock asked him. 

“Nothing.” Eames lounged on the opposite end of the sofa from John, taking up more than his share of space, and John frowned at him, to absolutely no effect. John thought he might as well be invisible in this room. “Just that it concerns Magnussen.” 

“You know who he is, right?” said Sherlock. 

“Newspaper magnate, I think,” said Eames. “If I’ve spied accurately on Arthur’s research.” 

“So much more than that.” Sherlock frowned at Arthur, as if disappointed in his research. 

“Tell us, then,” said Arthur, pen out, positioned over his moleskine. 

“I’m not exaggerating when I say that he knows the critical pressure point on every person of note or influence in the whole of the Western world and probably beyond.” 

“Not exaggerating at all,” murmured Arthur, taking notes. 

Eames gave a little snort of laughter into his coffee. 

John gave him a little glare because really, did he have to be so sickening over thinking that every single thing Arthur did was delightful? 

Sherlock was choosing to ignore Arthur’s commentary. “He is the Napoleon of blackmail. I thought you’d appreciate the French reference.” 

“He’s a card-carrying Francophile,” said Eames. “Literally. I literally made him a card.” 

Sherlock held his laptop up to Arthur. 

“It’s a skyscraper,” said Arthur, looking like he didn’t know what else to say. 

“It houses CAM Global News.” 

Arthur lifted his eyebrows. 

Eames said, “And our flat is in the Tenth Arrondissement. Now that we’ve settled basic geography—”

“This is where we need to get to Magnussen. His house is a fortress. We can break through the security here, though.” 

“And what are we doing to Magnussen once we get to him?” Arthur asked patiently. 

“Didn’t you hear me? He’s the Napoleon of blackmail. We’re getting all of it out of his head.” Sherlock smiled. 

***

John sat and listened to Sherlock’s descriptions of what Magnussen had done and to whom, listened to Arthur and Eames debate plans for what the dream would be like. 

“I’m not doing three levels with you,” Arthur was saying, “so it has to be done in two.” 

“He’s some kind of photographic memory blackmailer, it’s got to be three,” said Eames. 

“It’s not going to be three, Eames,” said Arthur, scribbling in his moleskine. 

John looked at Eames, who said, “Arthur—”

And then Arthur put his moleskine down and finally looked up at Eames and said, “Eames. Not three. Not together. You’re not doing a three-level with me and I’m not doing it with you, because we’d be enormous liabilities to each other, and you know it. We’ll get it done in two. Not three.” 

Eames, after looking back at him for a second, said, “Fine. Okay. Fine. You’re right.” 

“Wasn’t the dream with Moriarty a three-level dream?” John asked, looking between them. 

“With Somnacin that was going to drive everyone insane, remember?” said Arthur, calmly back to writing in his moleskine. “And if we use different Somnacin, in a three-level dream, the level of sedation means that you die in the dream and you don’t wake up, you fall down to limbo.” 

“And limbo’s bad?” said John, momentarily distracted by Sherlock making a huge racket in the kitchen. 

“Yes,” said Arthur. 

“But Sherlock was trying to get there. Moriarty told him—”

“Yeah, and there’s what’s wrong with that statement,” said Eames. He was sprawled on his back now on the sofa, flipping a poker chip over his knuckles. 

Something big clattered in the kitchen. John left Arthur and Eames to their confusing dreamtalk and walked into the kitchen, where Sherlock was surrounded by a pile of appliances that all seemed to be various phases of broken. 

“What the hell are you doing?” John asked. 

“Reorganizing the kitchen,” Sherlock answered. 

John stared at him. “Since when do you…” He couldn’t even think to put the words together to finish the question. 

“I do this sometimes,” Sherlock said, and dropped the toaster to the floor. 

“I… You have lost your mind. I mean, even more than your mind was always lost.” 

Sherlock shrugged. 

“Look.” John cast a glance back toward the lounge, where he could see Arthur and Eames debating something. He lowered his voice and said, “Do you think it’s the best idea, taking this case right now?” 

“Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?” asked Sherlock. 

John frowned, because was Sherlock really going to pretend to be such an idiot? “Because of the drugs,” he hissed. 

“That was for the case, John. For _this_ case.” Sherlock swept past him, back into the lounge, announcing confidently, “I think that we should do a two-level dream. The first level would be his house, the second level would be his choice.” 

“His choice?” echoed Arthur. “This isn’t a game show.” 

“He’ll be keeping everything in his mind palace. If we just let him fill in the architecture of the dream with his mind palace, then it’ll be more efficient. It will tell us immediately where the most important things are. We won’t even have to do any more work, no complicated trickery or anything.” 

John watched Arthur and Eames exchange a blank look before Eames said, “Mind palace?” 

“It’s a…Sherlock thing,” John said. “Listen, I am appreciative that you two came to help Sherlock with this, but I don’t think this is a good idea.” 

Eames lifted his eyebrows. “ _You_ don’t think this is a good idea?” 

“No,” said John, even though Eames asked the question in such a way as to make John feel like an idiot. “I don’t.”

Eames looked quizzical. “Sorry, but…how are you involved in this?” Eames looked at Arthur. “Do you have any role for John penciled into that plan you’re scribbling out so furiously, darling?” 

“It’s fine,” said Arthur. “We can do it with three people. Easily. We could do it with two.” 

“You’re not doing it without me,” said Sherlock swiftly. 

“And this is why I don’t think this is a good idea,” said John. 

“Look,” said Arthur, tipping his chair back and taking a deep breath like he thought John was a little child he had to set this out for. “You know from the Moriarty job that I don’t run jobs where people get hurt.”

“I’m not worried about that,” John snapped, annoyed that no one seemed to be taking him seriously. “He’s just suffered a relapse.” John jabbed a finger toward Sherlock. 

“Part of why no one gets hurt on my jobs is that I don’t work with addicts,” said Arthur calmly. “So that’s going to get settled pretty quickly.” He gave Sherlock one little quelling look before turning back to his notebook, and John envied him the cluelessness that allowed him to act as if dealing with Sherlock was ever that simple. 

John looked at Sherlock. “You’re determined to do this, aren’t you?” 

“Of course I am,” said Sherlock. “And, as I’ve said, it’s very, very dangerous. Very, very, _very_ dangerous.” Sherlock gave John a meaningful look. 

John frowned harder. 

“We’re going to have a working dinner,” announced Eames. “A nice one. With wine. And good food.” 

“Because we never have good food at home?” said Arthur. 

“Because one can never have too much good food.” 

“Yes,” said Arthur. “One can. Especially if one never jogs with one’s significant other.” 

“One prefers to sleep until at least sunrise, especially when one’s significant other keeps one up very late.”

“Yes. Because one’s significant other clearly keeps one up entirely against one’s wishes,” said Arthur. 

“Can we be done with this conversation?” begged John. “Please.” 

“Come to dinner,” said Eames. “And bring your wife. Arthur and I would love to meet her.” Eames smiled hugely at him.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Sherlock had been having a bad day before John had marched into the drug den. Then John had taken him to Bart’s and exposed him to all of _those_ indignities. Then he’d had to deal with Mycroft. And now he was dealing with Eames inviting Mary to _dinner_. 

Eames said, “So what’s she like?”

Sherlock considered poisoning Eames. “Fine,” he said. 

“Nice?” asked Eames. 

“I don’t know,” Sherlock snapped, irritated. “What the bloody hell is even the definition of that word? Everyone’s always worried about people being ‘nice.’ I don’t know. She’s a person, Eames. She’s…got blond hair.” 

“That’s relevant?” said Eames. 

“As relevant as if she’s ‘nice.’ What does that matter? Are _you_ nice?” 

“No,” Arthur said immediately, not looking up from him notebook. “He’s not nice.” 

“I happen to be extraordinarily nice,” said Eames. 

“This job is straightforward, actually,” Arthur said, tossing the notebook onto the desk. “I mean, the dream part should be. Especially if the plan on the second level is to let the mark have his way. Not what Eames and I would prefer, but if your mind palace theory is correct, it makes sense. The tricky part is going to be gaining access to Magnussen to get him hooked up to the PASIV in the first place. He’s not going to be somewhere accessible to us. He’s too well-protected.” 

“Our only chance is to get into his private flat while he’s already sleeping,” said Sherlock. “His flat here in London.” 

“The one in the building where his paper is headquartered?” said Arthur. 

Sherlock hated to admit he was mildly impressed. Arthur’s research skills were impeccable. “Yes. That one. If we could get into the corporate floor, could you get us to the floor above?” 

“Yes,” Arthur and Eames said simultaneously. 

“Then I’ll get us into the corporate floor,” said Sherlock. 

“How?” 

“I have tricks up my sleeve,” said Sherlock. 

“As long as you don’t have needles up your sleeve,” said Arthur. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “John is entirely overreacting. I need Magnussen to think I’m a drug addict so that he underestimates me. You two are going to be my sober companions.” 

“Your what?” said Arthur, lifting his eyebrows. 

“You’ll stick with me and make sure I don’t do drugs.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Arthur, and then looked at Eames. “He’s putting _you_ in charge of helping him avoid vices.” 

“Not _really_. That’s just your cover.”

“Magnussen will know we’re dreamsharers. He knows everything.” 

“Which is why we need to move quickly. When can you be ready to go? Is tonight too soon?” 

“Tonight?” echoed Arthur. “Yes, tonight is too soon. We at least need to look at the blueprints of the building to figure out our plan of attack from the corporate floor.”

“Tomorrow night?” said Sherlock. 

Arthur sighed. “I hate rushing.” 

“It depends on what we learn about the building,” said Eames, “but yes, tomorrow night, probably. In the meantime, we have a much more pressing problem.” 

Sherlock set his jaw and thought that if Eames said anything about dinner with John and Mary, he was going to throw something at his head. “What could that be?” 

“We have a dog that we dropped off at our hotel before coming here. If we’re moving in with you, we need to bring our dog.” 

“Your dog,” said Sherlock flatly. 

“Yes. His name is Tate. He’s dead friendly. Especially if you have peanut butter around. Do you have peanut butter around?” 

“What does it matter?” said Arthur. “Just feed him whatever you like, that’s what Eames does.” 

“I told you,” Eames replied. “That’s because you have me at a disadvantage. I’m trying to handicap you a bit.” 

“You realize that it is not a competition, the dog’s love.” 

“It’s definitely a competition.” 

“You’re an idiot,” said Arthur. 

Eames beamed at him and said, “Thank you, love.” 

Sherlock said, sourly, “Stop it. Both of you. I cannot take any more… _cuddling_ ,” he spat out. 

Arthur and Eames both stopped talking and looked at him. Arthur cocked his head, made a noise as if he was going to speak, then seemed to think better of it. 

Sherlock stalked into his bedroom and slammed his door. Slamming doors were so much more satisfying when people were there to hear them. 

***

“Cuddling,” spat out Eames. “I am not even _touching_ you.” 

“You’re flirting with me,” said Arthur. 

“I always flirt with you. I never _don’t_ flirt with you,” Eames pointed out. 

“I’m aware. But I told you to stop it. I told you not to rub it in.” 

“Flirting with you is rubbing in Sherlock’s face that John married someone else?” 

“ _Yes. Obviously_. Isn’t this supposed to be your thing, reading people?” 

“Reading people,” muttered Eames, leaning back on the sofa and looking up at the ceiling, disgruntled. “I don’t read people when they’re being idiots. This whole thing is stupid. I am going to have the loudest sex with you tonight. ‘Cuddling.’” 

“We’re not having sex tonight,” said Arthur. 

Eames scoffed at the ceiling. “Like you can resist me.” 

“Eames, look at me for a second.” 

There was something different about Arthur’s tone of voice. It wasn’t his dry I-pretend-you’re-annoying-because-otherwise-I’d-have-hearts-in-my-eyes-all-the-time voice. But it also wasn’t the flat commanding voice he used when they were working together and Arthur needed him to be serious. It was more…raw. In a way Eames didn’t know how to interpret. He looked at Arthur in surprise. 

“You’d never do it,” said Arthur. 

Eames had no idea what he was talking about. “Never do what?” 

“Marry someone who wasn’t me.” 

“Of course I wouldn’t.” Eames was startled. He actually sat up in alarm. “Arthur, do you ever think even for a second that I would—”

“No. I don’t. That’s what I’m saying. You’d never do it, so you have no patience for this situation, so you don’t get it. But here’s the thing: How many people did you fuck after you met me in Rio but before you started fucking me?” 

“I…” Eames blinked at him, not sure where this was going. “I don’t know, I…I didn’t keep count, Arthur, and we weren’t in a relationship. In fact, if you recall, you were extremely strenuously _not_ in a relationship with me.” 

“Neither are they,” said Arthur, and there was that flat tone he used to make points. 

Eames frowned. “Arthur—”

“No.” Arthur shook his head and looked down at his laptop and looked so furiously absorbed that Eames knew he was pretending. “They weren’t in a relationship. They _aren’t_ in one. And you think it’s stupid, because you think you never did anything like marry anyone else, but I was the one who sat and pined while you went home with everything that breathed in your direction, so—”

“I would have gone home with _you_ ,” said Eames, annoyed at this accusation suddenly rearing its head. “I _wanted_ to go home with you. Christ, I fucked so many people on jobs with you because I was so frustrated that I didn’t have _you_. You can’t possibly be—”

“But you never said that, did you?” Arthur snapped. “You never said to me, ‘Arthur, say one single word and I’ll never look at anyone else for the rest of my life.’ If you’d said that, don’t you think I would have said the word? But you never said that, because as far as I could tell you were forging your way into any pair of pants you could.” 

“If I’d said that to you, you would have laughed it off. You wouldn’t have believed me. I propositioned you a _million_ times and you never gave any indication that you—”

“I know,” said Arthur, sounding miserable, and suddenly leaned on the desk and put his head in his hands. “Let’s stop talking about it. I’m sorry I brought it up.” 

Eames stared across at him, confused and…feeling horrible. Feeling absolutely _horrible_. Because there was his Arthur, his calm and unruffled Arthur who dimpled at him over the breakfast table every morning, looking sad and unhappy and suddenly Eames had the sort of flash of intuition he had about other people but so seldom about Arthur, who was so often an odd, intriguing enigma to him, even now that Eames felt he knew him better than anyone ever had. But Arthur was careful and cautious and planned everything, and Arthur had longed for him and been terrified of him, and Eames had never made it easy, Eames had never made him _realize_ …

“I’m a fucking bastard,” Eames said bluntly and got up off the sofa. 

Arthur half-laughed. “You’re not. God, forget I said anything. I just _meant_ —”

“Arthur,” said Eames, and kneeled next to his chair, and Arthur looked at him in surprise, lowering his hands away from his face. “I’m sorry I did that to you.” 

Arthur shook his head a little bit. “You didn’t know—”

“You took this huge flying leap at me that day in the hotel suite, and you did that, even though I’d never even met you halfway—”

“You kissed me first,” said Arthur. 

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” said Eames, and he knew they both knew that. “I was so busy being offended that you wouldn’t take me seriously, I never stopped to think that you were the one who was so serious about it that I was ruining everything by pretending _not_ to be serious.” 

“Look, it doesn’t matter, okay?” said Arthur, looking down at him. “It all worked out. I’m just saying: Stop rubbing it in. It’s a horrible, terrible thing to watch the person you love smile at someone else, okay? You don’t need to drive that home to him. Trust me. He knows.” 

“I’m not doing it to be mean,” Eames said. “I’m doing it because if you hadn’t done what you did we would have missed this entirely. And I hate to see other people making that mistake.” 

“Maybe they’re not us,” said Arthur, pointing it out with that ineffable Arthurian reasoning of his. 

“Maybe,” said Eames, but thought of sitting in a pub with John and feeling absolutely convinced that John knew what it was like to be hopelessly in love, and not with Mary. He didn’t understand how either John or Sherlock had let the situation get to the point where John had married Mary. 

Eames put his head in Arthur’s lap, which was not something he really did, but he suddenly needed the reassuring contact and they were too awkwardly placed for anything else. “I don’t flirt with you to upset Sherlock. I flirt with you because you’re _you_.” 

“I know,” said Arthur. 

“And you love it, too,” Eames informed him. 

“It’s extremely annoying.” 

“You would miss it so much if I stopped. You would be bereft.” 

Arthur combed his hands through Eames’s hair and said, “Just dial it back a bit, would you? Just for now, hmm? I’ll be able to imagine your flirtations for myself in my head, don’t worry.” 

“No, you won’t. My flirtations are extremely unique and original and unpredictable. Does this count as cuddling?” he mumbled, because Arthur’s hands felt lovely and Eames was beginning to think he should have discovered the advantages of his head in Arthur’s lap before this. 

“Yes,” said Arthur. 

Eames closed his eyes. “Well, tough. I’m a rule-breaker.” 

“A fierce cuddling rebel,” said Arthur fondly.

Eames nuzzled a bit. 

“Don’t get ideas,” Arthur said. 

“You’re the one getting ideas, petal.” 

“My primary idea is you should go get Tate.” Eames felt him drop a kiss onto his temple. 

Eames smiled and sighed and stopped torturing Arthur but didn’t entirely move his head away. “Not just yet, I’m busy.” 

Arthur wriggled a bit underneath him, which Eames ignored, because he wasn’t moving until Arthur literally shoved him off. But after a second Eames heard the telltale clatter of Arthur’s die against the desk. 

Eames’s smile widened. “What’s it say, darling?” 

“Four,” said Arthur, and kept combing his fingers through Eames’s hair. 

***

Sherlock didn’t want to go to dinner with John and Mary. That wasn’t because he didn’t like Mary. Of course not. He liked Mary a great deal. He had always liked Mary. Mary made John happy. John looked at Mary with light in his eyes, almost like relief at having found something normal and charming and… _normal_. And Mary liked Sherlock, and not many people did, certainly none of John’s girlfriends before her. Mary didn’t make it a war or a competition, Mary encouraged John to solve crimes with Sherlock, and Sherlock thought this was the best situation he could hope for: John got his normal life with a woman who made him happy, and he also got the danger with Sherlock he craved on the side, and it was a perfect arrangement for John, so Sherlock would make it a perfect arrangement for Sherlock. 

Yes, Sherlock definitely liked Mary _very much_ , but that didn’t mean he was looking forward to dinner with her and John and Arthur and Eames, who were really the most annoying people he’d ever met and he wished he didn’t need their help with the Magnussen thing. 

“I don’t usually allow dogs,” Mrs. Hudson was saying, looking at the ridiculous fluffy red-brown _thing_ that had suddenly appeared in the sitting room. 

“But you allow dead body parts,” said Arthur drily from the desk where he was looking at his laptop. 

Mrs. Hudson gave Arthur a little frowny look. 

Eames very intelligently jumped in to handle the situation. He was on the floor, letting the dog crawl all over him, and he said, “Don’t mind him, he’s American, you know how rude they are. Tate, meanwhile, is _French_. He is very charming, as befits a French dog. And extremely well-mannered. Have you ever had a fling with a Frenchman?” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Hudson, pinking beautifully and tittering a little bit, “there was this one time—”

“That is quite enough, I think,” said Sherlock sharply. 

The dog stopped panting over Eames and looked at Sherlock warily. 

Sherlock actually really liked dogs—they were very useful crime-solving allies—but he wasn’t sure how he felt about this particular dog, who looked as if he was making up his mind not to like Sherlock. 

“He’s a little shy with strangers,” Eames said, petting him fondly, “but he gets there in the end. Much like Arthur.” 

“Stop it, please,” Arthur said, with a weary sigh, not looking up from the laptop. 

“I am ready for dinner,” Sherlock announced stiffly. 

“Oh, are you going to dinner?” Mrs. Hudson asked, looking between them.

“Yes, with John and Mary,” said Eames. “We are anxious to meet Mary. You’ve met her, of course.”

“Oh, of course. Went to the wedding. She’s lovely.”

“Nice?” asked Eames.

“Very nice.” Mrs. Hudson nodded.

Sherlock had had enough of this inane conversation. “Can we go?” he asked impatiently.

“Absolutely. Let me just lock Tate up upstairs so he doesn’t bother you, Mrs. Hudson. Come along, boy. You’ll be lonely for a little while but Arthur and I will be back soon, I promise, don’t feel too bereft and abandoned and worry that you’ll end up in a shelter again—”

“Oh, the poor thing,” Mrs. Hudson tutted, looking at Tate, who was somehow managing to look forlorn. “Will he be very lonely?”

“He’ll muddle through,” Eames said. “He’s a trooper.”

“Don’t listen to him, Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock snapped. “Clearly the dog is used to spending lots of time alone, given their lifestyle.”

But Mrs. Hudson was already saying, “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be too much trouble to keep him downstairs with me.”

“He will be a prince,” Eames said brightly. “I promise. You won’t even know he’s there. Shall we go down and get him settled?”

Eames and Tate followed Mrs. Hudson downstairs. Eames winked at Sherlock as he went.

Arthur shut the laptop and stood and said, “He’s turned our dog into a con artist. I’d be impressed if I wasn’t appalled.”

“I would imagine that’s your motto in a life with him,” said Sherlock scathingly.

But Arthur didn’t take it scathingly. Arthur smiled a soft little smile and said, “Not entirely untrue,” as if that was adorable.

Sherlock was so annoyed at how Arthur and Eames seemed to think everything was adorable. John never found anything adorable. John was a sensible human being who would never have stood and smiled that soft little smile over Sherlock being an idiot.

Except that maybe Sherlock had once thought that he did do things like that, and wasn’t that the stupidest thing Sherlock had ever done?

Arthur said, “Listen, I’ve asked Eames not to…”

Sherlock looked at him sharply to shut him up, because Sherlock didn’t want to hear the rest of that statement; he didn’t know what Arthur thought had to be avoided because Sherlock was vulnerable. Nothing had to be avoided; Sherlock wasn’t vulnerable.

“Not to be himself,” Arthur finished falteringly, having caught Sherlock’s expression.

Sherlock snorted. “Is that something he’s capable of doing?”

“Probably no more so than you are,” Arthur sighed, and Sherlock ignored that and swept his coat on.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Arthur had let Sherlock choose the restaurant, and it was a small, charming place where the proprietor greeted Sherlock warmly and gestured them to the front table, where John and Mary were already seated. Mary, Arthur thought, was pretty but unremarkably so, not showy. The sort of person who’d fade into the sea of projections if he was in a dream. And that, Arthur thought, was probably the most dangerous thing about her.

But she smiled warmly as they were introduced and seemed pleased to meet them.

Arthur said, “Sorry we’re late,” and John said, “Oh, I know how it is,” and Sherlock said, “They had to retrieve their dog.”

John lifted his eyebrows and looked between Arthur and Eames. “Your dog?”

“Tate,” said Eames. “Arthur, show him a photo.”

“I’m not going to show him a photo, that’s embarrassing,” Arthur told him calmly.

“How do you handle having a dog in your line of work?” John looked fascinated.

Arthur supposed he understood that. John had looked square in the eye the difficulty of a relationship with an unpredictable genius with an unpredictable career and an unpredictable lifestyle and had chosen the opposite direction. Arthur had taken that leap of faith John hadn’t, and now he weirdly had a home with a dog. Granted, he had many, many homes, scattered all over the world and in various states of common use depending on where the most recent outstanding warrants were, but all the same, it was probably much more domestic than John would have thought possible.

Eames must have come to the same conclusion about why John was asking the question, because he said drily, “Yes, Arthur and I manage to have a perfectly happy and rewarding life together, imagine that.”

Arthur kicked him under the table.

“What is it that you two do?” asked Mary with interest.

Eames said, “Arthur’s a chef, and I’m an artist.”

John lifted his eyebrows but said nothing.

Arthur followed Eames’s lead. It wasn’t like they normally went around telling people they were dream criminals, but he thought it odd to lie about it at the outset of a business meeting. He looked at Eames for guidance and was surprised by how closely Eames was watching Mary. Eames had a forger’s habit of watching people closely, hiding it behind a casual façade. But there was something oddly extra-alert about Eames with Mary, which explained why he was lying about their careers.

“Oh, lovely,” said Mary, smiling. “What sort of art?”

“Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that,” answered Eames.

“Eames is being too modest,” remarked Sherlock blandly. “You can see his work in some of the best museums in the world, can’t you, Eames?”

“I think we should order wine,” said Eames jovially.

Of course, right on cue, the waiter arrived, because Eames frequently seemed to have the magical ability to attract interruptions at the ideal time.

“Should we get two bottles for the table?” Arthur asked, glancing at the wine list.

John said, “Well, no wine for Mary, and I’m sticking with her in solidarity.” He smiled.

Arthur looked up from the wine list and said, “Oh, right, of course, the pregnancy. Congratulations, of course.”

“You must be very excited,” said Eames, with an odd flatness to his tone.

Arthur tried to look at him from the corner of his eye to discern what was up with him.

“Well, it’s no dog,” said John, with an edge lurking under his good-humored tone, “but I’m sure we’ll manage a happy and rewarding life.”

“Oh, I have no doubt,” said Eames, with a curl to his voice.

Arthur ordered wine. He had a feeling he was going to need a lot of wine.

***

John listened to Eames con his wife and grew more and more resentful. Mary asked interested question after interested question about what Eames and Arthur were doing in London and how they knew John and Sherlock, and Eames answered all of them with calm lies that didn’t resemble real life in any way. And Arthur sat next to him and let him lie, and Sherlock looked busy looking at everyone in the restaurant who wasn’t them.

“Oh, Arthur and I knew each other for years before we dated,” Eames was saying now, apparently in answer to another of Mary’s questions, and he flung his arm over the back of Arthur’s chair. “Friends before lovers, wasn’t it, petal?”

“Would you have called us ‘friends’?” asked Arthur wryly.

Eames laughed and said to Mary, “He is hilarious. His sense of humor is my favorite thing about him. No, we were friends for years. Very good friends. And then one day, finally, one of us admitted what we both knew: that we were much more to each other.”

“One day Eames thought we were going to die and suggested we have a lot of sex before that happened, and then later I had a panic attack and told him I loved him,” said Arthur to Mary. “Ignore his over-romantic version of the story.”

“But, darling, your story is leaving out the most important part.”

“Eames,” said Arthur in a clipped tone, through a tight smile, “remember our conversation about not telling people details of our sex life?”

“See what I mean, Mary? Hilarious. What I meant was that you left out entirely Sherlock’s role in getting the two of us together.”

“Sherlock’s role?” echoed John, surprised, because he’d never heard this story either. He looked over at Sherlock.

Sherlock frowned a little and said, “I really didn’t—”

“You did. You persuaded Arthur to tell me. We owe you everything.”

John stared at Sherlock, amazed.

“Sherlock!” exclaimed Mary in delight. “Were you playing matchmaker? How delightful.”

John said, puzzled, “Since when do you…play Cupid?”

“Well, they were so obvious, weren’t they?” mumbled Sherlock. “It was annoying.”

“Aww, Sherlock, you should always use your powers for good!” teased Mary. “You could open a whole dating business.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” said Sherlock.

John was still stuck on the fact that Sherlock had noticed that Arthur and Eames were in love with each other. Sherlock wasn’t normally so adept at the interpersonal relationship thing. Unless he was using it to solve a murder. John said, “Since when do you even notice that other people care about each other? You certainly never noticed when it came to Molly’s crush on you.”

“Oh,” said Eames heartily, chomping his way through a breadstick, “a lot of people have enormous blind spots when it comes to matters of their own heart.”

Eames gave him one of those innocent knowing looks he’d been giving him all night. John thought he was going to end up punching that look off of Eames’s face before the evening was over.

“Hence,” Eames continued, “why Arthur and I didn’t notice what was so obvious to everyone else. But luckily we didn’t miss it entirely. Sherlock forced us to come to our senses, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” Eames looked at Arthur and beamed.

Arthur did give him a small smile, just a little quirk of dimples, something quick and secret that irritated John. 

“Why don’t we get to work?” said John. 

“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Eames. “No work tonight.” 

John stared at him. “But I thought this was a working dinner.” 

Eames shook his head. “Only way I thought I could lure you out. Your husband is all-work-and-no-play.” 

“Don’t I know it.” Mary smiled at him, his own secret fond smile; Eames and Arthur didn’t have the market cornered on those. “Are you lot working on a case or something?” 

“Missing artwork,” Arthur said easily. “Having Sherlock help us track it.” 

John stared at the two of them, wondering about the reason for their abrupt turnaround and then deciding it wasn’t worth his brain power. They were just as insane as Sherlock. He wished he was drinking wine. 

Eames leaned back in his seat with his wine and said, “Tell us all about your great love story. John tells us you met at work.” 

***

Sherlock didn’t say a word about the disaster of the dinner. In fact, he didn’t say a word to them at all, just walked straight into his bedroom and slammed the door shut. 

Arthur frowned after him and waited for Eames at the top of the stairs. He could hear Eames flirting with Mrs. Hudson about Tate and the sound grated a little bit on his nerves, which he recognized meant that he was furious, because normally he found Eames’s reflexive flirtation adorable. 

Tate came bounding up the stairs to him, tail wagging, and Arthur made himself be welcoming and scratch behind his ears, because it wasn’t Tate’s fault Arthur was furious, but he was aware his greeting was stiff and perfunctory. 

Eames paused at the top of the stairs and lifted his eyebrows at Arthur, and Arthur had been fully intending to shout at him but suddenly didn’t want to. He was suddenly much more in favor of the silent treatment. So he turned and stalked up the stairs to the extra bedroom, pleased when Tate followed him. 

Arthur was undressing with automatic efficiency, taking off his cufflinks, tugging off his tie. Eames closed their door and leaned up against it and watched him and said, “Silent treatment. Really not your style.” 

Arthur glared at him by way of the mirror as he unbuttoned his waistcoat. “What the fucking hell was that?” 

“Dinner,” said Eames, all studied innocence. 

“I’m not one of your marks,” Arthur snapped at him, “so drop the fucking act and talk to me or I’ll put a bullet between your ribs.” 

“Okay,” Eames allowed. “I couldn’t help—”

“A _working dinner_ ,” Arthur reminded him, stalking over to him. “You said you wanted a working dinner and you spent the _whole thing_ making us out to be the great love story of the twenty-first century when I _specifically asked you_ —”

“There’s something off about her, Arthur,” Eames said evenly. 

Eames’s evenness gave Arthur pause. He had expected Eames to snap back at him. “About Mary?” Arthur realized. 

“There’s something off about her. I couldn’t have it be a working dinner. I don’t want her to know what we’re doing here. I don’t want her to know anything about us.” 

“She’s a pregnant nurse, Eames,” said Arthur, in exasperation. “What the fuck, she’s not the Russian mafia in disguise—”

“How do you know that? Have you researched her?” 

“No,” Arthur admitted, after a second. “You think I should research her?” 

“There’s something off about her,” Eames insisted. 

“Okay,” Arthur said, after another moment of silence. “I’m going to suggest something here, and I don’t want you to bite my head off.” 

“Really? You don’t want _me_ to bite _your_ head off? After you threatened to put a bullet in me?” 

“I don’t think you’re…impartial when it comes to Mary.” 

Eames regarded him in silence, then said, “Meaning you think I’m biased against her?” 

“You’ve got it in your head that John made some big mistake when he married her, and I’m just going to suggest that it’s possible you were predisposed not to like her.” 

“Yes,” Eames clipped out. “You must be right, Arthur. My entire life has depended on my ability to accurately read people, but you’re right, I am easily swayed by petty matchmaking considerations.” 

“Eames,” Arthur sighed, because there was really no good way to have this conversation. 

“Nope. Absolutely right. Thank God I met you so that you can tell me how to do my job. I was really just flailing around incompetently until I had you to explain every sodding thought in my head to me.” Eames pushed past Arthur, pulling his shirt off as he went. 

Arthur turned to follow him. “Eames—”

“Let’s go to bed,” Eames said shortly. 

Tate looked between them and whined faintly, because Tate hated when they fought.

Arthur decided the thing to do was to be a coward and retreat to the bathroom, because he kind of also hated it when they fought. He had a bad habit of swallowing the confrontation part of it all, partly, he knew, because he never wanted to give Eames the impression that he ever, even at his most furious, wanted out of this whole situation. 

When Arthur got back, Eames was in bed and curled into a ball with his back to Arthur, which was the world’s most obvious body language. Tate, also curled into a ball but at the foot of the bed, looked up at Arthur and thumped his tail against the mattress. 

Arthur crawled into the bed and said softly, “I do trust you and your instincts. I know they’re better than mine. I just didn’t want to make the whole evening into rubbing Sherlock’s nose in our happiness. And you knew I didn’t. So I’d’ve preferred if you could have figured out a way to tell me without doing _that_.” There, thought Arthur. He thought that was very adult and mature, flatly and unemotionally laying out exactly what had irritated him about the evening. So he closed his eyes and prepared to sleep. 

Eames shifted, and Arthur knew he turned over to look at him. He could feel the weight of his gaze on him. 

Arthur waited for him to speak, but he didn’t, so eventually Arthur opened his eyes, prepared to _make_ Eames speak. 

Eames was, as Arthur had thought, just looking at him, and he didn’t look angry, or apologetic, or confused. He looked… He just looked like Eames, Arthur thought. Eames the way he looked at Arthur, which Arthur was well aware these days was unlike the way Eames looked at anyone else in the world. 

Arthur crept forward a bit so he could press his face into the curve of Eames’s neck and said, “We didn’t miss this. I’m right here. Where’s your totem?” 

“I already checked it,” Eames said, gathering him close. 

“Check it again,” said Arthur. “You need to.” He could tell; Arthur _knew_ that look. 

There was a moment of jostling while Eames found his totem and then he curled back toward Arthur and tossed a leg over him, dragging him closer. 

***

“Eames,” said Arthur’s voice in his ear, low and urgent, and Eames was awake and alert immediately. 

“What?” he whispered, hand already around the gun under his pillow. 

“We’re not in danger,” Arthur murmured, “I just need to talk to you.” 

Eames relaxed marginally and rolled over so he could peer up at Arthur. There was pre-dawn light creeping into the room, and Tate was snoring loudly, sounding like he’d moved to the floor, which he sometimes did if it got too warm in the bed. Arthur was wearing one of Eames’s T-shirts, which he did because he knew Eames loved that, and his hair was mussed, so he clearly wasn’t up and ready for the day. He did, however, look very awake. 

And he didn’t look at all like he had woken Eames up to ravish him. In fact, he looked worried, his face puckered with it. 

“What?” said Eames, and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and sat up. 

“You’re right,” Arthur said. 

“Narrow that down, love,” Eames told him, around a yawn. 

“Mary Morstan died as an infant,” said Arthur. “She’s dead. We could go visit her grave if you wanted to.”

Eames stared at him. “What are you talking about? We met her last night.” 

Arthur’s smile was grim and dimple-less. “Exactly.” 

“So she… Wait, John Watson’s wife is living under an assumed identity?” 

“And a good one, too. It took me some digging, Eames. It took _me_ some digging.” 

Eames stared at him. Because he hadn’t trusted Mary, but he hadn’t thought _this_ would be lingering in her past. “What is she covering up?” 

“I have no idea,” said Arthur. “Her life is a blank. I have no idea who she was before she became Mary Morstan three years ago. I can’t find _anything_. I’ve been looking all night and I have drawn a _blank_ , Eames. _Me_.” 

“Fuck,” said Eames fervently and pushed his hair off his forehead. Because if _Arthur_ couldn’t find anything, then this was bad. Very bad.

“But here’s what I do know. Her best friend? Works for Magnussen. Now what do you think are the odds of that?” 

“Really?” 

Arthur nodded. “And not just, like, random employee in his vast media empire. Basically his personal assistant. And have you and I stayed alive this long dismissing things as coincidences?” 

“No,” said Eames. “Do you think John knows? Do you think Sherlock knows?” 

“How can they not know? I’m good, but I’m not so much better than _Sherlock Holmes_.” 

“Maybe they didn’t think to look into her past. Maybe not everyone lives their lives as suspicious bastards like us.” 

Arthur lifted his eyebrows. “So you think Mycroft Holmes let this pass?” 

“You make a good point,” Eames conceded. “But if they knew, why didn’t they tell us?” 

Arthur looked at him. 

“You think we’re being set up?” Eames asked. “For what purpose?” 

“I have no idea,” Arthur said glumly. “But I should have listened to you when you said to stay away from this job. You were right again.” 

“I am really always right, you know,” said Eames seriously. 

“I know, I hate you,” said Arthur, and collapsed dramatically up against his shoulder. 

Eames chuckled and kissed his temple and said, “What time is it? Were you up all night doing this?” 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Arthur mumbled into his collarbone. 

“So how do you want to play this?” 

“I think we might be a step ahead of them right now. They don’t know that we know that Mary’s not who she says she is. I think. Unless they’re setting us up by planting red-herring stuff about Mary out there. But I see zero purpose for that.” 

“I see zero purpose for any of this. I feel like these people could just kill us already, instead of jerking us around the way they keep doing.” 

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said, after a long moment of silence. 

“For what?” 

“I feel like an idiot,” he mumbled miserably. 

“For not knowing about Mary before we got here?” 

“No, for…for…for being such a terrible judge of character. This is why I don’t have friends, you know.” 

Eames was suddenly much angrier at Sherlock than he had been just a few minutes earlier. Being double-crossed was one thing and practically to be expected in their lives. But Arthur had few people who he thought of himself as being fond of, and he’d obviously been fond of Sherlock for the role he had played in getting them together, and Eames hated Sherlock for shattering that small part of Arthur that had let himself think that maybe he’d made a friend. 

Eames thought it possible he was going to kill Sherlock, but instead he just said mildly, “Let’s pretend we don’t know anything about Mary. Let’s see where that gets us. Maybe we can determine what game they’re playing.” 

Arthur nodded. Then he said, “In the meantime.” 

“In the meantime what?” 

Arthur shifted, pulling his shirt off and tossing it aside. “We are going to be very fucking loud,” he said. 

***

Eames and Arthur, thought Sherlock, were extraordinarily annoying and Sherlock had had quite enough of them. 

Which was how he found himself at dawn wandering through the streets of London smoking his way through a pack of cigarettes and thinking about John and Mary and how surely they were slumbering happily in their picture-perfect home with a half-finished nursery and lists of baby names and _whatever_ , thought Sherlock, it was all _wonderful_ that John was that happy, so much happier than he would ever have been with Sherlock. 

Sherlock ignored the black car that pulled up next to him. Ignored it and ignored it and ignored it. 

Finally the window rolled down and Mycroft said, “That’s enough. Stop. Get in.”

“Piss off,” said Sherlock. 

“I want to talk to you about this self-destructive job you think you’re working with Eames and Arthur.” 

Sherlock almost laughed at that. He was annoyed enough with Eames and Arthur that he didn’t think there really was any job. He didn’t want to work with them anyway. He’d only called them in because he hadn’t had John. 

Which was really the crux of all of his problems, and he hated that Eames and Arthur had made that crystallize for him. He wished he’d never rung Arthur. 

Sherlock stopped walking and turned and looked at Mycroft and said, very deliberately, “Stay out of my way.” 

“Sherlock,” said Mycroft in that insufferable way he had. “You are in over your head with Magnussen.” 

“You always think I’m in over my head,” Sherlock snapped, because Mycroft had never stopped treating him like a child who needed to be coddled constantly. 

“I mean it this time. I’ve let you do any number of mad things. Do not fight me on Magnussen.” 

Sherlock looked at him evenly and said, “Why? Scared I might win?” 

Mycroft narrowed his eyes. 

Sherlock walked briskly away.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Sherlock met Arthur and Eames on their way out as he was coming in. Because he found the very _sight_ of them annoying, he didn’t look very hard at them. 

Arthur said, “We’re taking Tate for a walk.” 

Sherlock didn’t know why they both had to take the dog for a walk. Maybe it was a fussy, difficult dog who required two handlers. It did seem likely that they would have a fussy, difficult dog. But Sherlock didn’t care. Sherlock said, “Fine.” 

Eames said, “Where have you been?” Almost suspiciously. 

As if Sherlock had been out scoring drugs in an alley somewhere. Okay, he been out scoring nicotine, he supposed, and that was a type of drug, but still. Sherlock was _so sick_ of being watched over so much. Like he was five years old. “Do you want to check me for fresh track marks?” he asked scathingly. 

“No, we want to go,” said Arthur, and practically shoved Eames down the stairs. 

Sherlock frowned after them, then went into the sitting room and flung himself dramatically onto the sofa. 

***

“Give me Tate,” said Arthur, and took the leash, and then said, “You’re going to go scope out Magnussen’s building.” 

Eames blinked, because they hadn’t discussed this. “I am? Me?” 

“Yes. You have been some approximation of a professional thief your entire life, surely you have learned how to case a building properly by now.” 

“No,” said Eames. “I haven’t. That is to say: yes, I have, I am very bloody good at it, but you’re better, and you didn’t say ‘we.’”

“I have something I need to take care of.” 

Eames narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What something?” 

“Chasing down some loose ends on my research.” 

“I can come with you,” said Eames. 

Arthur shook his head. “I need you to make sure that it looks like the building adheres to the blueprints.” 

“So we’re splitting up?” 

“We will be fine.” 

“What is it you’re going to do?” 

“Eames, it involves research; if I explain it to you, you’ll fall asleep. Go scope out the building, I’ll handle Tate, we’ll meet back here in a couple of hours.” Arthur turned him around bodily, gave him a little nudge. 

Eames resisted. “I like absolutely nothing about this idea.” 

Arthur sighed and said, “Do you trust me?” 

Eames swore. “That’s playing dirty and you know it.”

Arthur lifted his eyebrows innocently. 

“You know I trust you. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to go and do something astonishingly idiotic right now.” 

“Who is it, of the two of us, who does astonishingly idiotic things?” 

“It isn’t _always_ me,” grumbled Eames. 

“Yes, it is,” said Arthur. “It is definitely always you.”

“I have a feeling that after today that’s no longer going to be true. I swear to God, if you get yourself killed, I will never forgive you.”

Arthur looked offended. “I’m not going to get myself killed.”

“Mmm. Tate, don’t let him get himself killed.” Eames twisted his hand into Arthur’s tie and used it to tug him forward. “I love you madly and don’t you dare do anything that would break my heart.” 

Eames thought Arthur was going to kiss him but instead Arthur pressed his nose against Eames’s cheek in an odd, touching gesture of affection that twisted Eames’s insides into pieces with alarm. “I never would and you know that,” Arthur said, and then he straightened away and walked off with Tate. 

Eames stood and watched him go and considered what he could be up to and whether he ought to follow him. But he had zero chance of following Arthur without being seen, so he supposed he was going to have to trust him. 

But he pulled out his mobile and texted him as he went. 

_I mean it, if u’ve saved all the fun on this job for urself, I’ll never forgive u_

Arthur responded just with _y-o-u_ , which was basically a proclamation of undying devotion in Arthurspeak. 

***

Tate was pleased at the outing, because Tate loved outings. Tate wagged his tail and sniffed at everything and took little bounding steps back to Arthur, as if to say, _Isn’t this the most amazing place? I love this place!_ Tate loved everywhere. Arthur supposed this was the good thing about being a dog. Tate was the only creature he’d ever met in the universe with more untiring enthusiasm than Eames. Tate even loved the Tube. 

Arthur followed the mental map in his head that he’d looked up so carefully and walked them through a dishwater-dull neighborhood. Tate bounced around and clearly thought this place was spectacular, too. 

“You and Eames,” Arthur told him. “I could stick the two of you anywhere and you’d be utterly fine with it as long as we were _together_.”

Tate wagged his tail in agreement. 

Arthur rolled his eyes and paused outside the house he wanted, mentally double-checking the number. 

Then he walked up to the door and knocked. 

After a second Mary Watson opened it and smiled at him and said, “Oh, look. It’s the point man.” 

Arthur made his living from never being surprised by anything. And if Mary Watson was good enough at whatever dubious thing she did in order to hide her past from him, then Mary Watson was definitely good enough to figure out they were dreamsharers. 

So Arthur just said, “I think we should have coffee, don’t you?” 

***

Sherlock had a case. The Magnussen case. Sherlock was supposed to be working on the Magnussen case. And he was, too. Any minute he was going to get up off the sofa and work on the Magnussen case. Especially now that he no longer wanted to work with stupid Arthur and stupid Eames. Just a matter of time. Any minute now. 

The door opened and closed downstairs, and for a second Sherlock thought it must be Arthur and Eames coming home. 

But the step on the stair was…John. Unmistakably John. 

Sherlock sat up, startled and hoping that he didn’t look startled, hoping that he looked like he didn’t care if John stopped by or not, because he absolutely did not care if John ever came to visit, he was absolutely fine without John. 

Sherlock decided it was ridiculous that he was sitting up, it was giving everything away. He needed to be lying down. 

No, sitting up. 

No—

John walked in when he was in the middle of deciding how he wanted to arrange himself and so Sherlock ended up just flopping somewhere awkwardly in the middle. 

John lifted his eyebrows at him and said, “Are you sulking again so soon? I thought you would be delighted to have your two pet criminals playing whatever sort of game you’re playing with that pointless dinner last night.” 

Sherlock himself wasn’t sure what that whole stupid dinner had been about, other than giving Eames and Arthur a chance to be smug about how irritatingly disgusting they were with each other. Sherlock thought this was what you got when you gave people good advice, and this was why usually he left people to their own stupidity. 

But Sherlock couldn’t tell John all of that so Sherlock said, “It’s all for a very important case.” 

“Yes. Magnussen and the dream and all that stuff.” John had been wandering through the sitting room, apparently not really wanting to acknowledge that his chair was no longer there and he had to use Sherlock’s. Now he stopped with a hand casually knocking against the mantle and gave Sherlock a sideways little look. 

Sherlock regarded him evenly. What he hated more than anything about this new life he was living where John lived away from him and had a wife and a baby on the way was how much of John seemed to be an enigma to him now. He pretended it wasn’t true, that he knew everything about him. He could breezily deduce that John was bored and in need of an adventure, but that had always been John, that was an easy deduction to make. Sherlock didn’t know how relationships worked really, what people in happy relationships looked like. 

And he hated to admit that about himself. 

And actually, thinking about it, maybe people in happy relationships looked like Arthur and Eames, lazily content, loosely relaxed, always confident of where the other was in the room, where the other was in their _life_. Confident that, if anything were to happen, ever, their backs were covered by each other, they’d never have to get out of the mess alone. 

Sherlock had rather stupidly thought that he’d had a happy relationship with John, before the whole Mary thing. Sure, maybe they’d never exchanged declarations of love, and maybe they didn’t shag, but were those things really so important when the heart of he-and-John-together had been their close, instinctive teamwork, their facing the world together? 

But Sherlock had been an idiot, and Sherlock hated being an idiot, and it seemed like he was now stuck in some constant cycle of being an idiot, and falling in love, if he was in love with John, which he thought was true, was clearly the stupidest decision he’d ever made. 

John said suddenly, hesitantly, when the silence had stretched into horrible awkwardness, “Why would you call them?” 

“I need to get into Magnussen’s head,” Sherlock said. “I need to know what he knows, and I need to know where he’s keeping all of his blackmail materials.” 

“And you don’t think we could have found that out together?” John asked. “How many cases have we saved without needing to resort to dream crime? Why did you think we couldn’t do it this time? You didn’t even _try_.” 

Sherlock looked at John. And then he said slowly, “I didn’t think you would want to—”

“Sherlock,” John cut in sharply. “What would give you that impression? That I wouldn’t be here for you if you needed me?” 

“What would give me that impression?” Sherlock stared at John, because seldom did John behave _this stupidly_. “The fact that you are married and expecting a child.” 

“That doesn’t mean I’m not still going to help you,” John retorted. “Did I ever tell you that I was done with all of this?” 

Sherlock wanted to say, _When you moved out and married somebody else_. But Sherlock didn’t say that. Sherlock said, “I thought it was obvious. You never rang me—”

“You never rang _me_ ,” John shot back. “I didn’t want to bother you—”

“Bother me?” said Sherlock. “ _Bother_ me?” 

“I thought you’d ring me if you needed me.” 

“And I didn’t think you wanted to be bothered,” Sherlock snapped. 

“Well, you were wrong,” John snapped back. 

“Obviously,” said Sherlock, thinking of his deductions in Molly’s lab. He swept his eyes up and down John and tried to chronicle things about him. John was anxious for an adventure, John was bored. But that was just John. Wasn’t it? Did that mean he was bored with his marriage? 

Sherlock had _no idea_. 

And before he could say anything about it, the door opened and closed downstairs. 

“Sherlock!” Mrs. Hudson called, and then came bustling into the flat. “That was the doorbell. Couldn’t you hear it?” 

Sherlock shook his head a little bit, annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of this conversation he needed to puzzle through. “It’s in the fridge. It kept ringing.” 

“That’s not a _fault_ , Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson complained. 

“Is there a reason you’re here?” Sherlock demanded, just wanting to be rid of her so he could get back to John. 

“Who is at the door?” John asked politely, because that was the kind of thing John would ask, of course he would, he would _care_ who was at the door. 

And Mrs. Hudson took a deep breath and said, “It’s Mr. Magnussen.” 

Sherlock sat up straight, abruptly very interested in the visitor. “Send him up,” he said to Mrs. Hudson, and, to John, “Follow my lead.” 

“Follow your lead?” John echoed. “Magnussen is _here_? What’s he doing _here_?” 

“Let’s find out, shall we?” said Sherlock. He resisted the urge to clap his hands together in glee. This felt good. This felt _right_. He and John, on the case, together. Why had he ever rung Arthur and Eames? 

Well. Because it had made John jealous and now John was back here with him. 

Temporarily. 

But he wasn’t going to focus on that. 

“Sherlock,” John hissed at him, as if he didn’t approve of what was going on. Which was silly because Sherlock knew for a fact that John _loved_ what was going on. John was so absurd. 

He should make John go into his own head just to see what he thought about things. Maybe an idea to propose to Eames and Arthur. If he ever forgave Eames and Arthur for being obnoxious. 

And then Magnussen walked in and Sherlock pushed Eames and Arthur out of his head and just thought about _John_ and the _case_ and how this was the life he wanted, this, this perfect little moment here on the edge of danger, the edge of possibility, the edge of _everything_. 

He came in with bodyguards, of course. Sherlock allowed himself to be frisked down. 

John hesitated, glancing at Sherlock. “Er,” he said, as the man started frisking him. “I should probably tell you…” 

The man divested him of a gun. 

Sherlock almost beamed at him. That was his John, always prepared for everything. “I can vouch for this man. He’s a doctor. If you know who I am, then you know who he is. Don’t you, Mr. Magnussen?” 

Magnussen said nothing, just looked at Sherlock with what seemed like mild amusement. He looked Sherlock up and down slowly, and then John. Sherlock recognized what he was doing: trying to intimidate them into talking by just being silent for a really long time. So Sherlock was silent for a really long time in return. John glanced at him and followed his lead. 

Magnussen wandered through the room and looked at positively everything in it. Sherlock waited. So did John, although he seemed impatient next to him. Sherlock understood: John liked action; waiting wasn’t really in his nature. 

Finally Magnussen looked up, straight at Sherlock, and said, “Redbeard.” 

Of all the things that Sherlock had been expecting Magnussen to say, he hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t braced for it. It hit harder than he wanted it to, and he knew he gave himself away, blinking in reaction. “What?” he managed. 

“Bathroom?” Magnussen asked, turning to one of his bodyguards. 

“Along from the kitchen, sir,” answered the bodyguard. 

“Is it like the rest of the flat?” Magnussen gestured around the flat. 

Sherlock felt John bristle next to him. Trust him to get the most offended at an insult to their flat. Sherlock thought he might be smiling fondly, and then worried that he looked as idiotic as Arthur did. 

“Er, yes, sir,” said the bodyguard. 

“Maybe not, then,” said Magnussen, and nodded toward the fireplace. 

The bodyguard walked over and took the fire guard away, and Sherlock did not frown and was very careful not to show that he was wondering what Magnussen intended to do with their fireplace. 

“Best thing about the English,” Magnussen remarked as he walked over to the fireplace. “You’re so domesticated. All standing around, keeping your little heads down.” And then there was the sound of a zipper. Sherlock felt John startle in shock next to him, but Sherlock himself kept his face carefully impassive, as if there was nothing at all insulting in having someone use your fireplace as a toilet. “You can do what you like here,” Magnussen continued conversationally. “No one’s ever going to stop you. A nation of herbivores. I’ve interests all over the world, but everything starts in England. If it works here, I’ll try it in a real country.” The sound of a zipper again. At least that whole horrifying event seemed to be over, thought Sherlock. 

The bodyguard held out a package of wet wipes, apparently prepared for the possibility that Magnussen would simply urinate wherever he pleased. Magnussen accepted one. 

“The United Kingdom, huh?” said Magnussen, turning to them. “Petri dish to the Western world. I’m not entirely sure what client secrets you think you could ever possibly convince me to yield to you. But whatever they are, the answer is no.” Magnussen dropped the wet wipe to the floor and said, “Good-bye.” 

Magnussen left, followed by his bodyguards, and John sprang into immediate action, his fury filling up the room. 

“Jesus!” he seethed. 

“He’s rattled,” said Sherlock, satisfied. 

“Really?” asked John sarcastically. “Because he didn’t seem rattled to me.” John gestured toward the fireplace. 

“He paid me a visit. Here at this flat. Unexpected. I think that he heard I’d procured dreamsharers. I think he was hoping to catch them here. I think he thinks that he has an idea what’s going to happen next. Or, at least, what I’m going to try to have happen next. Little does he know. He’s got dinner with the Marketing Group of Great Britain from seven ‘til then, and that’s when you and I are going to break into his offices and have a look around.” 

“Wait, what?” said John. 

“Tonight Magnussen won’t be around, so that’s our opportunity to get the lay of the land in his office.” 

“I thought you were going to go into his head to get the information you need,” John said, confused. 

“I have that as a back-up plan. But that’s messy and risky. I would never do that _first_. First I’m going to try to determine what he keeps around and where. So we break into his office tonight.” 

“You think I’m breaking into Charles Augustus Magnussen’s office?” John’s eyebrows skidded up. 

Sherlock adored him. He adored how John liked to pretend that he could ever in a million years walk away from an offer of some dangerous fun. “Yes,” he said simply, wondering if he was beaming at John embarrassingly. 

“What makes you think so?” asked John, looking a little perplexed by the way Sherlock was looking at him. 

“You do,” said Sherlock, pleased and proud. 

John hesitated, then said, “What about Arthur and Eames?” 

“Oh,” Sherlock said loftily. “I’ll take care of them.” 

***

The house was perfectly lovely, perfectly respectable. Arthur didn’t really care for it, it seemed a little bit bland to him, but maybe that was because he’d grown used to living with Eames and Eames was prone to throw fertility idols onto the coffee table just to add some interest. 

He sat in the kitchen while Mary poured them coffee that there was no way he was drinking because he still had no idea who Mary was other than someone he should not underestimate. For all he knew, Mary would totally try to poison him, and Arthur had promised Eames he wouldn’t get himself killed. 

Mary handed him his coffee and Tate growled. Arthur looked down at him in surprise, because Tate didn’t like strangers but was usually shy about them. Arthur tried to think if he’d ever heard Tate growl. But Tate growled now and shrank closer to Arthur in what was unmistakably a protective gesture, and Arthur was immensely touched by this. 

Mary lifted an eyebrow and said, “Are you never without a watchdog?” 

“I’m well loved,” said Arthur, and actually meant it, which was kind of an amazing realization to have reached here in this moment, and accepted the coffee. “So why don’t we talk about who you are?”

“Why don’t we talk about who _you_ are? And what you’re doing here?” 

“I’m friends with Sherlock,” said Arthur lightly. 

“Sherlock doesn’t have friends outside of my husband.” 

“You think I’m lying?” 

“I think mostly you leave the lying to your forger boyfriend. He’s a natural at it.” 

“I won’t dispute that,” said Arthur. “Something I think you and he have in common.” 

“If you think you’re going to waltz in here and ruin this life that I have built for myself,” said Mary, and her voice was hard and threatening. “I won’t let you. I love my husband. I’ve worked hard to get him. I can’t lose him. I’ll shoot you first.” Mary lifted the gun. 

Which didn’t surprise Arthur at all. He’d been expecting that. He was busy filing away all of the information he’d learned: John didn’t know. If Sherlock knew, then he had an alliance with Mary to keep the information from John. That seemed unlikely to Arthur. He tried to imagine himself ever allying with one of Eames’s assignations to keep information like this away from Eames, to cover up lies. Anyway, if Mary had an alliance with Sherlock, she wouldn’t be so paranoid about Arthur and Eames’s presence. Freelance, thought Arthur. Only freelancers covered their tracks that well. Arthur thought he needed to plug into the underworld a bit more. Or have Eames do it. They were going to have to have a discussion about it. 

Tate growled and barked once, baring his teeth and standing at the sight of the gun. 

Mary frowned at him. 

Arthur said, “If you shoot my dog, I’ll have my gun out and you shot before you can get around to me.” 

“I think you’re underestimating how good I am,” said Mary. 

“I think you’re underestimating how good _I_ am,” Arthur replied. “And I’m still in practice. I’m not playing at being a suburban housewife. Put the gun down. You’re being paranoid and ridiculous. Eames and I have zero interest in you.” 

“Then why did you want to have dinner with me?” asked Mary suspiciously. 

_Because my boyfriend is a stupidly romantic idiot_ , thought Arthur, but thought that probably the way to get Mary to put her gun away wasn’t to say that Eames thought John should have married Sherlock, not Mary. “That was Eames. He is an insufferable gossip. Put the gun away, Mary. Or whatever your real name is.” 

Mary regarded him for a long moment. She had a cool, appraising look. The look of someone who was used to pulling a trigger and didn’t get emotional over it. Arthur knew he had the same look when he had to kill someone. You made up your mind based on the logic of the whole thing. 

So Arthur spoke logically. “Eames and I have zero interest in you. I owed Sherlock a favor from way back, and Sherlock rang me to ask for my help with a dream crime he needs to perpetrate. Not against you. Not against anyone to do with you. We’re going to do our jobs, and then we’re going to leave. That’s if you let me walk out of that door. Whereas if you shoot me, here’s what will happen: Eames will kill you. But he won’t do it quickly, and he won’t do it painlessly. He’ll torture you first. And I don’t mean pulling off fingernails. He’ll absolutely explode this pretty little life you’ve got going for yourself here. He’ll turn John against you, and he’ll make you live through it, and then he’ll kill you when that’s all over with. And that’s not me threatening you, that’s me being very logical and honest. And if you’re thinking that you’ll be able to get to Eames before he makes all this happen, please pause to consider that Eames loves me _a lot_. You don’t have a chance, Mary. So put the gun away and let’s come to an arrangement.” 

“What arrangement?” asked Mary, not putting the gun away. 

“You stay out of our way, and we’ll stay out of yours.” 

“I’ve worked with your lot before, you know,” Mary said evenly. “Years ago. I never had the patience for all the literal head games you play. But I know your reputation. So if you give me your word, I’ll back off.” 

Arthur was busy filing away the knowledge that Mary had worked with someone who knew him. Or knew of him. A dreamsharer that Arthur must have some kind of connection to, through someone. Arthur just had to find that connection and he could unlock Mary’s past. He said mildly, “If you know my reputation, then you know I don’t make deals with guns aimed at me.” 

Mary, after a second, clicked the safety on the gun and replaced it back where it had come from. 

He said lightly, “You have my word. You stay out of our way, we’ll stay out of yours. You can live your happy suburban life with your baby. I’d say you should get a dog, but dogs don’t seem to like you very much.” Tate was still standing right up against Arthur’s leg, the fur bristling on his back.

“So you’re really here helping Sherlock with a case,” said Mary. 

Arthur nodded. 

“Stolen art?” said Mary. 

“Something like that,” Arthur said, because he wasn’t about to give Mary more information than that, and then stood. “Come along, Tate. I’m sure Mary has to go finish painting the nursery or something.” 

Arthur had his hand on Mary’s doorknob when Mary spoke again. 

She said, “I’m so glad we reached this deal. I hated the idea of hurting Eames.” 

And Arthur knew Eames was his vulnerable spot. Arthur knew he took threats to his own well-being without blinking but went insane whenever Eames was the one in danger. Arthur knew that was why Mary said it. 

And Arthur also knew, in that moment, that it was the biggest mistake Mary could have made. Arthur took his deals very seriously, but Mary wasn’t in his business, so she meant less to his reputation and she had just fucking threatened Eames, after their deal had already been struck, so all bets were off. 

Arthur glanced at Mary. Mary was smiling at him. So Arthur smiled back. 

And Arthur said, “Thinking that I love him less than he loves me would be a grave error. You need to do a little more research, because you are absolutely wrong about which of us you’d rather be facing as the last one standing.”


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Eames had done a circle around the building outside and then had conned his way in, had lifted himself a badge and checked out the layouts of a few of the floors. They all seemed to adhere to the blueprints, but that wasn’t to say that Magnussen’s personal floors would follow suit. It seemed not just likely to him but probable that Magnussen would have built in extra protections, and Eames couldn’t prepare for those without being on the floors themselves. Although he supposed he could guess. Maybe he’d sit at a café somewhere to kill some time thinking his way through the possibilities. Arthur said Eames was a good improviser and he should leave those kinds of advance preparations to Arthur, but Eames also had time to kill while Arthur was out on his mysterious errand. 

Eames’s mobile rang while he was bluffing his way through his fourth floor of the day. It was a bustling law firm where not a single person even looked in his direction. 

Eames glanced at Arthur’s number and answered it, relieved. “Darling.” 

“Where are you?” Arthur practically snapped it at him. 

Eames blinked and looked at his watch. He definitely wasn’t late to meet Arthur. “I’m where you told me to be. Where did you think I would be? Wait, did you expect me to follow you? I did contemplate it, but—”

“Meet me downstairs,” said Arthur brusquely. 

“What—” 

Arthur hung up on him. 

Eames frowned and went downstairs and found Arthur prowling along the sidewalk outside the building. Tate looked agitated and barked his alarmed bark at Eames when he saw him. 

“Hey,” Eames said, and patted Tate down because Arthur looked like he would snarl if Eames tried to pet him down. “What the bloody hell have you two been doing?” 

Arthur surprised him by hauling him in and kissing him hard and then saying, “If anything ever happens to me, I want you to hunt down whoever’s responsible for it and absolutely fucking _destroy_ them, okay?”

Eames was startled. “Yes, that was my plan in any case, but what the hell have you done, Arthur?” 

“I haven’t done anything. Nothing that should have gotten me threatened. And for that I am going to fucking tear her life to little pieces if I have to because if it’s this stupid fucking job that—”

“Arthur, back up right now,” Eames cut him off firmly. “Where were you just now?” 

“I went to see Mary,” said Arthur. 

“Mary? What? Why would you do that?” 

“To see what we were up against. I needed to know more. I don’t understand that situation, and I don’t know how we’re supposed to plan the rest of this dreamshare if we don’t know all the information.” 

“I would have gone with you.” 

“I didn’t want to gang up on her. And it’s a good thing I didn’t, since she _completely_ overreacted to just my being there. She is a fucking loose cannon, and I cannot have her fucking up my—”

“What did she say to you?” 

“She knows who we are. I mean, she _knows_ us. She did some sort of dreamsharing work at some point in her past. Not directly, but she knows people who know us. She knew my reputation. I’ve already put out feelers to try to determine who it is who worked with her, but I have the feeling she was freelance. It all makes sense.”

“Freelance what?”

Arthur gave him an impatient look. “Assassin.”

“John Watson is married to a freelance assassin?” Eames repeated, and then looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping on their conversation. 

“John doesn’t know. I am positive about that. That’s why she threatened to kill me, because she was so terrified I’d tell John.” 

Eames’s eyes narrowed. “She threatened you?” 

“She threatened _you_ , that’s how she threatened me, and I do _not_ allow that to happen. So I made a deal and promised we wouldn’t tell John, and we are going to fucking ignore that because I do not make deals when you are being held over my head like that.” 

“I’m going to murder her,” said Eames flatly. 

“No, first we’re going to talk to Mycroft,” said Arthur. 

“Mycroft?” Eames echoed. 

“I am pretty sure Sherlock doesn’t know. Because don’t you think he would tell John? At any rate, why would she panic if we were working with Sherlock and she had some kind of deal with him? She doesn’t have a deal with Sherlock. And I don’t want to go break it to him. Everyone involved in this is too fucking emotional, us included. I want to talk to Mycroft. Because if Mycroft knows and is letting this whole thing happen, I want to know why.” 

This made some sense to Eames. He considered, then said, “I think I remember where Mycroft’s club is. We could—”

Arthur shook his head. “He might not be at his club, and I don’t want to waste time.” 

“Then how do you propose we get in touch with him? Do you still have his email address?” 

“He blocks me, because he’s an idiot. So this is the only idea I have.” Arthur took out his gun and shot the nearest CCTV camera. 

People started screaming on the street all around them. 

Eames sighed and said, exasperated, “Darling.” 

Arthur shrugged. 

***

As if he didn’t have enough to deal with, between Sherlock’s drug habit and obsession with Magnussen, not to mention _running the bloody country_ , now he had criminal associates shooting government property. 

And they had a _dog_ with them. 

“We don’t allow dogs in here,” Mycroft snapped at them as he walked into the talking room of the Diogenes. 

Arthur said, “Please tell me that you know that John Watson’s wife is a freelance assassin.” 

And Mycroft pushed aside everything else he was supposed to be dealing with. “How do you know that?” he asked. 

“Because I’m a professional and you have never done anything but underestimate me, and you’d think you wouldn’t make the same mistake twice,” snapped Arthur. “Does Sherlock know?” 

“This scotch is fantastic,” said Eames from over by the bar.

“That’s not for you,” Mycroft told him sternly, aware he was just going to be ignored. He turned back to Arthur. “Of course Sherlock doesn’t know.” 

“Why is that an ‘of course’? Eames knew something was up with her the minute he looked at her.” 

“But I’m just very good,” said Eames, knocking back some scotch. 

Mycroft hated both of them passionately and rued the day he had had Eames hit with the car. “Do you think Sherlock sees anything to do with John Watson clearly?” 

“Obviously not,” remarked Eames, “or he would have told him he loved him before it got to the point of John’s stupid, stubborn denial leading him to _marry an assassin_.” 

“John doesn’t know she’s an assassin. Neither does Sherlock.” 

“And you think this is a good idea?” asked Arthur calmly. He was leaning against one of the bookcases, arms crossed, with his dog curled at his feet. 

“I think it’s how it has to be,” said Mycroft, because, honestly, he didn’t think anything that was going on was a good idea but he was doing the best he could to control the fallout that was going to happen. 

“Mycroft,” said Eames solemnly, and walked over and pressed a tumbler of scotch into his hand. “Mate.” 

Mycroft’s eyes widened in shock. 

“I think you’re trying to make the best of a really bad and complicated situation. I think you’ve been trying to do it while keeping your brother safe, and keeping safe the person your brother cares about most in the world. I think keeping safe the people you care about is the world’s most exhausting thing to accomplish, and it’s easier when there’s two of you working together. It’s even easier, I’d imagine, when there are three. So why don’t you tell Arthur and me exactly what’s going on? Because you look like a man who could really use some help.” 

Mycroft’s automatic reaction was to deny everything about this speech. 

And then Arthur said, “He’s the person you love most in the world, isn’t he? You don’t let fucking pride interfere with keeping the person you love safe. You ask for help. If I needed help to protect Eames, I’d be here groveling immediately, and you know it.” 

“I think you’d be here holding a gun to my head,” Mycroft reminded him drily. 

“My approach to get the help might be strident,” said Arthur unapologetically, “but we both know I’d do whatever I fucking could to save him. So take the scotch and sit down and let’s get this job done.” 

Mycroft contemplated for one long moment. 

And then Mycroft sat. 

***

“Her real name is Bastia Moran,” said Mycroft, and Arthur got out his moleskine and started scribbling. “I ran a background check as soon as she got involved with John, of course. Routine. I have them run on all of John’s girlfriends. My brother makes enemies, and there’s always reason to be concerned. I thought it would come back bland and uninteresting. All of them do. John cycles through girlfriends fairly regularly.” 

“So of course he marries the one who’s an assassin,” remarked Eames. “There’s a possibility John has an unhealthy attraction to dangerous situations.” 

Mycroft gave him a dry-as-desert look. “As I assessed the first time I met him. Do you think people who are attracted to tranquility choose my brother as a flatmate?” 

“So she’s an assassin,” Arthur interrupted, trying to get them back on track. 

“Not just an assassin. Moriarty’s right-hand man. Woman.” 

“Moriarty,” groaned Eames. “Again with him?” 

“If you’re tired of him,” retorted Mycroft, “imagine how I feel.” 

“So you let John Watson marry Moriarty’s right-hand woman,” clarified Arthur. 

Mycroft fixed him with an even glare. “Of course I did. Much safer to keep her close. I wanted to keep an eye on her.” 

“And you weren’t worried she was going to exact revenge on your brother?” demanded Eames.

“Of course I was. But by the time I learned who she really was, John had been dating her for a little while. I hadn’t put a rush on the background check, I’d grown complacent. I thought we were finally safe, after the Moriarty situation was resolved.” 

Arthur lifted his eyebrows at the delicacy of the euphemism but said nothing. 

“She had plenty of opportunity to kill Sherlock. But she didn’t. In fact, she went out of her way to make friends with him. Rather than trying to separate him and John, she has done nothing but promote their friendship.” 

“And you don’t think that’s suspicious?” said Arthur. 

“I would think it was suspicious if I could uncover any motive whatsoever. She has not made a single report to anybody. She has no contact with people from that time of her life. She is, as far as we can discover, completely reformed, a pregnant nurse with a doctor husband. It appears to be a case, indeed, of true love.” 

Arthur thought of Mary holding the gun on him. Arthur thought of what little sense it had made for Mary to fly off the handle so immediately. And Arthur nodded. “Actually, that makes sense.” 

“It makes sense?” Eames looked at Arthur. “All of a sudden you’re a huge romantic who believes in true love?” 

“I don’t think it’s true love,” said Arthur. “I think it’s a relationship built entirely on lies so it can’t possibly be true love. But I do think she’s infatuated with him. She knows who I am.” 

“Of course she does. Moriarty had his fingers in dreamsharing pies, you know. I can’t believe neither of you ever ran across him.”

“We don’t work for unhinged lunatics,” remarked Eames. “It’s kind of what’s kept us alive this long.” 

“She knows who I am and she pulled a gun on me and threatened me hard,” Arthur went on, as if he’d never been interrupted. “There’s no reason to do that. She has no reason to think that I would give a fuck about who or what she is. She way overreacted, and that’s an emotional mistake. That’s the kind of thing you do when you feel like your entire way of life is being threatened, like you won’t be able to survive if you let the situation play out. She’s completely irrational over John Watson, for some reason.” 

“You have to watch out for the quiet, capable ones,” murmured Eames, sipping at his scotch. “They’ll steal your heart when you’re not looking, it’s very inconvenient.” 

“I think my brother would agree,” added Mycroft wryly. 

Arthur could feel the blush at the tips of his ears and hated it. “So you want us to leave the Mary situation as is,” he said, trying to ignore the personal tilt to the conversation. 

Mycroft sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. I would much prefer to have her out of the picture, but I don’t know how to do it now without breaking John’s heart, which will break Sherlock’s heart, which is not anything I desire.”

“You realize that if she starts to see Sherlock as a threat to her marriage, she will not hesitate to take him down,” Arthur pointed out. 

“Let her try,” Mycroft said flatly. “I sense she’d be surprised by the special ops team that would descend upon her if she ever came anywhere near Sherlock with a gun on her person.” 

“It seems to me that you don’t do an especially good job of watching Sherlock,” Arthur couldn’t resist saying. “Seeing as how he went and developed a drug habit.” 

Mycroft glared at him. He said tightly, “That was a mistake. I thought John Watson was paying attention. I’d grown used to John Watson paying attention. And I’ve already admitted I was lax in the wake of getting rid of Moriarty. I won’t make such a mistake again.” 

“Good to know,” said Eames. “Arthur and I will sleep much better in Baker Street.” 

“In a way, I am relieved that you paid me this little visit,” said Mycroft, with the air of changing the subject. 

Arthur lifted his eyebrows in surprise. 

“Because I want to talk to you about this Magnussen job.” 

“Ah, yes,” said Eames. “You don’t want us on the Magnussen job.” 

Mycroft addressed Arthur. “You’ve researched him. Do you think this seems like a good idea?” 

“I think it seems like a cakewalk compared to Moriarty,” Arthur answered truthfully. 

“He is powerful beyond advisability,” said Mycroft, choosing his words carefully. 

Arthur narrowed his eyes, thinking. “Do you like him?” 

“Is that relevant to the situation?” Mycroft replied. 

“Are you allied with him?” Arthur amended. 

“No,” said Eames appraisingly. “He’s blackmailing you, too.” 

“I wouldn’t call it ‘blackmail,’” said Mycroft. 

“I would,” said Eames. 

“Magnussen knows everything about everything. His network of information is vast. There is no government in the world that can handle exposure of all of its secrets. Mine is no different.” 

“What if we got rid of him for you?” said Eames. 

Mycroft said nothing. Mycroft regarded them both evenly. 

“Your brother’s on the case right now,” Eames continued. “Dedicated enough that he called in the two of us. You know you don’t have much of a shot of getting him extricated from this. So why don’t you let us handle this for you?” 

Mycroft arched an eyebrow. “Because that turned out so well last time?” 

“Actually, yes,” said Arthur. “It did. It took care of your Moriarty problem, didn’t it? It’s not our fault he had an unknown assassin still lingering out there.” 

“We can get rid of Magnussen for you,” said Eames. “We can go into his head and get all the blackmail information you’ll need on him to even the playing field. We’ll do it professionally and without leaving any sort of mess behind.” 

Mycroft’s eyes were narrow and thoughtful. “For how much?” 

“Consider it a favor between friends,” suggested Arthur lightly. 

“But you really should deliver on the Savile Row suit for Arthur,” added Eames. 

Mycroft was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’m not sure you fully comprehend Magnussen’s power.” 

“I’m not sure you fully comprehend how good we are,” said Eames casually. 

Another moment of silence. “If you can get it done cleanly, do it. But if you get into trouble, I will not be able to help you.” 

“We won’t need help,” said Arthur. 

“You need to tell Sherlock the truth about Mary,” said Eames. 

“What would that accomplish?” inquired Mycroft. 

“He’s going to find out eventually,” Eames said. “It’s probably better he find out from you.” 

“I have the Mary situation under control. You barely know my brother. I don’t especially think it’s your place to attempt to give me advice. If I wish to hear your advice, I’ll solicit it.” 

“I’m really, really bad at waiting for people to ask me for advice,” said Eames. 

Mycroft stood. “This interview is over. Don’t shoot any more CCTV cameras, I’ll have you arrested.” 

Arthur watched him sweep out of the room. 

Eames said, “What do you think about the Mary thing?” 

“I think we’re telling Sherlock,” said Arthur. “After we take care of Magnussen, because I don’t want him distracted. But we’re definitely telling him. Not just because we owe him for what he did for us, but also because I’m not fucking letting Mary get away with threatening me like that.” 

“You’re fucking hot when you’re like this and I should blow you right now,” Eames told him. “The fact that it would really irritate Mycroft is just a bonus.”


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

When they got back to Baker Street, Sherlock didn’t ask where they’d been. He just said, “I think we should practice.”

Arthur lifted his eyebrows at him and said, “Really? I thought you wanted to get everything done tonight.” 

“And I thought you wanted to wait,” Sherlock pointed out pleasantly. “So we’ll do things your way and we’ll practice first.” 

Arthur narrowed his eyes and considered, but he couldn’t determine what Sherlock’s ulterior motive might be, so he said, “Okay. Sherlock, you need to be in the second level for the extraction, and I’ve decided it’s best if I’m in that dream with you.” 

“Why?” asked Eames. “I could handle the second level.” 

“I’d rather let you deal with the first. You and Sherlock are both excitable personalities with nonexistent impulse control. You’re going to be terrible at moderating each other and instead you’ll just egg each other on. So I’m separating you.” Arthur said it calmly. He’d already given a lot of thought to the whole situation and he thought this was best. 

Eames said, “Like this is _primary school_?” 

“Fine,” Sherlock said, simply. “So Eames will dream the first level and Arthur will dream the second.” 

“Except that the second level is mark’s choice,” Arthur reminded Sherlock. “So there won’t be much for me to do.” 

“I anticipate there’ll be a lot for you to do,” Sherlock said. 

“Why do you know such crazy people?” Eames asked Sherlock. 

Sherlock shrugged. 

Arthur finished prepping the PASIV and said, “Okay, ready?”

“I’m not going to have this house perfect, just so you know,” Eames said. “I did the best I could with what I had on it, but Arthur and I haven’t had enough time to perfect the build.” 

“You could have had all day if you didn’t disappear,” said Sherlock mildly, giving them a look. 

Arthur decided that was enough and pressed the button. 

***

For being a rough build, it was actually decent. Eames always downplayed his memory, but his memory was generally flawless and effortless. He could absorb a great deal of information quickly and easily and reflect it back without thinking much about it. Arthur envied it a lot, actually, since it took Arthur a great deal of time and energy to pull information together, and Eames always just gobbled it up the same way he polished off the meals Arthur painstakingly concocted. 

Arthur stood looking around the house’s foyer and said, “Not bad. What do you think, Sherlock?” 

Sherlock was in a frowning match with one of Eames’s projections. “Not very friendly here, is it?” 

“It was a rough day,” Eames said wearily. “My subconscious is out of sorts.” 

Meanwhile, three projections came over and fought over who would have the honor of shining Arthur’s shoes. Arthur lifted his eyebrows at Eames. 

Eames said, “I told you: my subconscious has always really liked you.” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. 

Arthur said, “It doesn’t matter. In the real dream, Magnussen will supply the projections and we won’t have to worry about Eames playing favorites.” Arthur ducked away from two more projections who were trying to offer him hot chocolate. 

Sherlock said, “I want to explore. I want to get a feel for what it’s like to be in a dreamscape on my own.” 

“Why?” said Arthur suspiciously. “I’ll be with you on the second level.”

“Oh, let him do it,” Eames said. “You know half the fun in dreamsharing is getting to poke around.” 

Arthur looked at him. 

“Oh, right, you don’t know because you never have fun with dreamsharing,” Eames corrected himself. “But it _is_ fun. Off with you, Sherlock. The PASIV was set to give us an hour down here, explore to your heart’s content.”

Arthur watched him move away and frowned. “He’s up to something.” 

“He’s probably going to try to steal the PASIV from you and pull this off all by himself,” Eames remarked. 

Another one of Eames’s projections came running over with a scarf, and then another one came running over with a misting fan, and then another one came running over with a bouquet of flowers. 

Arthur said, “Christ, if I let you, you would suffocate me.” 

“With adoration?” Eames rejoined mildly. “Yes. I would. You never let me.” Eames moved off in the opposite direction from what Sherlock had taken, mounting the staircase.

Arthur hesitated before following, and thought maybe he should be kind to Eames’s projections instead of miffed. They did, after all, represent the fact that Eames loved him, and he would have to be a complete dick to be upset about that. So he said, “I’m good, thank you, no need to worry, I am absolutely perfect and very happy,” and sent them a bright smile as he retreated up the stairs. 

“I thought you’d notice the very first time you were in my head,” Eames remarked as he walked down the hallway. “I mean, not for a job. When we used the PASIV for fun.” 

“The city dream,” Arthur recalled. “In London.” 

“Yes.” Eames stopped and pushed open a door. “I mean, you did notice, but you didn’t comprehend what was happening. And I wanted to shake you a little bit to make you wake up and see. I thought it would be so bloody obvious to you. I have always been so in love with you that even my subconscious would let you burrow right in and colonize and never even blink, would just welcome the intrusion. And that just went right over your head.” 

They were in a bedroom. Eames had stopped inside the room and was turned back to address Arthur. Arthur put his hands in his pockets and considered how to respond, before admitting, “I don’t work that way. You…” Arthur took a deep breath. “You _do_ that, you just let people in, and you’re not scared, and I don’t know how to do that.” 

Eames took a step closer to him. “I don’t just let people in. I let _you_ in.” 

Arthur took a shaky little breath, feeling off-balance. He said, “I never know what to do with you.” 

Eames closed the bedroom door and locked it and said, “I have some ideas.” 

***

Sherlock took the staircase down to the basement of the house and listened. Some of Eames’s projections followed him down and frowned at him, but they seemed a little more relaxed now that he was no longer near enough to be actively threatening to Eames. 

So Sherlock dreamed himself a gun, checked to see that it had a silencer as he intended, and shot himself in the head. 

And then, once in Baker Street, he looked down at the sleeping Eames and Arthur and thought that he needed to buy himself some time. 

He looked at the PASIV and considered the controls. For such a complex technology, it was a fairly straightforward machine, and he’d watched Arthur set it several times now. So he ratcheted up the time limit to keep Eames and Arthur under an extra hour in real-life time. They’d probably notice long before that—that was a long time in dreamtime—but it would buy him some indeterminate amount of time to be ahead of them, which was what he wanted. He had no idea where they’d spent the day or what they were up to, but he didn’t want them interfering with his plan with John. 

He’d texted John to meet him outside Magnussen’s building, and he was delighted that John was there. He thought he’d be there—he’d been fairly confident—but Sherlock never knew when John might do unpredictable things these days. Mary was mostly an unknown variable influencing John’s reactions, no matter how much data Sherlock had managed to file away about their relationship, and the baby was an entirely unknown variable. 

But still. John was there. No Mary and no baby and for the time being, for the span of this lovely adventure, John Watson was entirely his. Sherlock could pretend it was like the old days. 

“Only you would look this excited at breaking and entering,” remarked John. 

“Relax. I’ve got us an in,” Sherlock assured him, and led him into the building. “Did you bring a gun?” 

“Of course I brought a gun,” mumbled John, casting an eye at the security guard at the desk. 

“Overkill,” said Sherlock. “I don’t think we’ll need it.” 

“Well, forgive me for trying to be prepared. Do you know how well-protected this bloke must be?” 

“Indeed.” Sherlock settled into lecturing mode (he supposed John would call it “showing off” mode), enjoying himself. “His office is on the top floor, just below his private flat, but there are fourteen levels of security between us and him, two of which aren’t even legal in this country.” 

“Sounds promising,” remarked John grimly. 

Sherlock couldn’t help but smile at him. He just really, really loved having John along. “So we’re going to use Magnussen’s private lift. This way.” Sherlock led John over to the escalator, continuing to lecture him. “It goes straight to his penthouse and office. Only he uses it and only his key card calls the lift. Anyone else even tries, security is automatically informed.” Sherlock walked over to the lift, John following behind, and Sherlock flourished his key card. “Standard key card for the building. Doesn’t have access to the private lift. If I was to use this card on that lift now, what happens?”

John said, “The alarms would go off and you’d be dragged away by security.” 

“Exactly,” Sherlock agreed. 

“Get taken to a small room somewhere and have your head kicked in,” continued John. 

“Vivid, John, thank you,” said Sherlock. “But if I do this…” Sherlock pressed the card against his mobile. “If you press a key card against your mobile phone for long enough, it corrupts the magnetic strip. The card stops working. It’s a common problem – never put your key card with your phone. What happens if I use the card now?”

“It still doesn’t work,” answered John. 

“But it doesn’t read as the wrong card now,” Sherlock pointed out. “It registers as corrupted. But if it’s corrupted, how do they know it’s not Magnussen? Would they risk dragging him off?”

John chuckled dryly. “Probably not. He’d probably pee on them.”

“So what do they do? What do they _have_ to do?” persisted Sherlock. 

“Check if it’s him or not,” concluded John. 

Sherlock nodded, pleased. It was _so good_ to have John along to appreciate the brilliance of this whole plan. “There’s a camera at eye height to the right of the door. A live picture of the card user is relayed directly to Magnussen’s personal staff in his office. The only people trusted to make a positive ID. At this hour? Almost certainly his PA.”

“Okay,” said John, looking confused. “So how’s that help us?”

Sherlock smiled at him. “Do you know who Magnussen’s PA is?” 

John cocked his head. “How would I know that?” 

Sherlock smiled again and stepped past John and pressed the key card confidently against the reader. 

John looked alarmed. “You realize you don’t exactly look like Magnussen?” 

Sherlock just kept smiling at him. 

And then, as expected, Janine’s voice came over the intercom. “Sherlock! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Sherlock grinned widely at Janine. “Remember how I said I’d bring John ’round on the idea of throwing a surprise party for Mary? Well, here he is!” Sherlock tugged John over so Janine could see him. 

“John!” Janine, delighted, waved at John enthusiastically. “Hello!” 

“So let us up so we can plan our party,” said Sherlock, giving her a smile that he thought would be considered winning, since he’d copied it from Eames’s repertoire of falsely beguiling smiles. 

“I can’t just let you up here,” said Janine, and giggled. “My boss would—”

“Oh, come on,” said Sherlock, “your boss can’t possibly be there this late. Why is he even making _you_ work this late?” 

“Yeah, you’re right, he’s awful,” Janine agreed, with a laugh. “Oh, what the hell, it’ll pass the time until he gets back. Come on up.” 

And the lift doors opened. 

John stepped onto it next to him, and Sherlock almost rocked back and forth from toe to heel. He was so tickled pink to have John there next to him that he felt like energy was bursting out of him. 

John said, “You’ve kept in touch with Janine?” 

“She’s Magnussen’s PA,” Sherlock pointed out reasonably. “Knew she’d come in useful.” 

“And you’re planning a surprise party for Mary,” said John. 

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. That’s just our cover story. I can’t think of anything more boring than planning a surprise party for Mary.” 

John frowned a little bit. 

Sherlock hastily tried to correct whatever misstep he’d just made there. “Planning a surprise party for anyone, not just Mary,” he said. 

John just gave him a look. 

The lift doors opened and Sherlock suppressed his little delighted thrill at finally being _right in Magnussen’s office_. The real business of discovering Magnussen’s secrets was about to start now, and he couldn’t wait. 

“Okay,” said Sherlock. “We should split up to—”

“Shouldn’t we talk to Janine first?” said John. “Won’t she be looking for us?” 

“Oh,” said Sherlock. “I suppose. Why don’t you deal with that? See how much information you can get out of her.” 

“Um,” said John. “Information about what?” 

Sherlock was already moving away, too eager to explore to care about what John was saying. “Magnussen,” he shot back, and went in search of Magnussen’s office.

***

“We should light cigarettes,” said Eames, stretching languorously on the bed. 

“If you want,” mumbled Arthur, sprawled bonelessly next to Eames on the bed, because he didn’t really feel like moving at the moment. 

“Of course I want. Most of the fun of dream sex is the cigarette afterward. I’ll make it smell like the ocean.” 

Arthur made a noncommittal noise and closed his eyes while the unmistakable scent of the ocean filled the room. Eames was good at manipulating scents in a dream, which was odd because Arthur seldom even thought about scents in a dream. He thought Eames really did focus on the whole dream in a way Arthur didn’t. Eames was trying to create an _experience_. 

“What about a chocolate cake baking?” Arthur suggested. 

“Feeling peckish?” asked Eames. “When’s the last time we ate, anyway? Should we dream ourselves up some room service?” 

Arthur shifted his wrist so he could see the watch he was still wearing. And then he sat up. 

Eames, blowing smoke rings to entertain himself, looked at him in surprise. “I thought it’d be a little while before you were moving again.”

Arthur forgot to tell him to stop being so smug and said, “Why are we still in this dream?” 

“What?” said Eames, and glanced at his own watch. And then he said, “What the hell?” 

Arthur had already dreamed them up a gun. 

***

John watched Sherlock disappear up the stairs and sighed. Typical. Sherlock begged for him to come along and then relegated him to pointless false small talk with Janine. 

“Janine?” John called, resigned to his role. Time to answer the usual questions: _How’s Mary? How’s she feeling? Do you know if you’re having a boy or a girl? Have you started discussing names yet?_

Except there were no questions. There was nothing but silence. Surely she should have been right there; she’d just let them in. 

“Janine?” John called again, stepping forward and suddenly spotting her on the floor. “Janine!” John exclaimed in alarm, and rushed over to her side, feeing for a pulse. Alive, but knocked out. A blow to the head. “Janine, focus on my voice now. Can you hear me?” 

This wasn’t good, thought John. This wasn’t good at all. He should call the police. He should—

And that’s when he heard the gunshot. 

***

Sherlock encountered a passed-out security man at the top of the stairs, in front of where he should have been standing guard at what was clearly the entrance to Magnussen’s private penthouse. Sherlock paused for a moment, crouching down and taking in the white supremacist tattoo. Sherlock stood back up, unimpressed, and sniffed the air, struck by a familiar scent. His brain cycled through perfumes, waiting to slot it in, as he kept moving forward cautiously, bracing himself every moment to encounter whoever had beat him to the intrusion. 

He was in a carpeted hall, moving slowly, catching the muffled notes of Magnussen’s voice, sounding anxious and panicked. _Claire-de-la-lune_ , his brain identified as the perfume, even as he took in that Magnussen sounded like he was pleading. Who wore Claire-de-la-lune? Someone…someone…it was nibbling at his brain. He _knew_ this perfume, not just from his studies. 

Sherlock reached the end of the hall, the partially opened door, and peered through it. There was a person clad in black holding a gun to Magnussen’s head. As Sherlock watched, the person cocked the gun, and Magnussen whimpered. 

_Mary_ , Sherlock’s brain realized unhelpfully. Mary wore Claire-de-la-lune. Hardly useful information at this point in time. 

“What—what—what would your husband think, eh?” stammered Magnussen. “He— Your lovely husband, upright, honorable, so English. What—what would he say to you now?” 

Sherlock considered the situation. Magnussen was despicable and his death would probably make for a better world. But, at the same time, Sherlock hesitated in the doorway, considering. John would hardly thank him for standing by while a man was murdered. Well. Probably. Probably John wouldn’t thank him. John could be somewhat unpredictable on the subject of murdering people. But this new married, expectant-father John, what would he—

Sherlock didn’t think he did anything to attract attention, but suddenly the person holding the gun turned on him. And Sherlock didn’t react. Sherlock couldn’t react. Because Sherlock’s brain didn’t ordinarily grind to a halt but it could be forgiven for going completely blank except for one thing. 

“Mary,” said Sherlock, shocked, staring into her face. _Mary wears Claire-de-la-lune_ , his brain reminded him. _You should have known. Known that John Watson’s pregnant wife would be about to commit murder in a blackmailer’s penthouse? It’s always something, isn’t it?_ Sherlock thought the internal disagreement he was having wasn’t very helpful, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. 

Or do. 

He just stood there and stared and thought back over every moment he’d ever shared with Mary, everything that had led up to this incredible moment, and that voice in his brain said, _Yes. You should have known. You knew it the first night. “Liar”…_

“Is John with you?” Mary asked, because apparently Mary thought they should be having an actual conversation with questions and answers and words in sentences. 

_Liar, liar, liar_ , echoed through Sherlock’s head. “He’s, um…” Sherlock started. _Liar, liar, liar…_

“Is John here?” Mary asked the question with flat sternness, and Sherlock recognized that tone, he used it when people were being overemotional idiots instead of being logical and useful. 

And Sherlock knew Mary was talking to him the way he talked to stupid, troublesome witnesses, and that should mean something, that should… Sherlock answered the question. “He’s—he’s downstairs.” He had convinced this woman’s husband to infiltrate this place with him, and he’d thought he’d been doing something incredibly clever and daring, giving John back his danger, and now his wife was holding a bloody gun on him. 

Sherlock thought, _You were never going to be able to compete with her. Look, she gives him everything._

Magnussen said, “So, what do you do now? Kill us both?” 

Sherlock started, because he’d forgotten Magnussen was in the room. And then he thought, _Magnussen_. Of course. Mary was here for a reason. Stupid, _stupid_ , he had to _think_. Magnussen was a _blackmailer_. 

Sherlock got a grip. He stopped flailing uselessly over how John was never going to love him—hadn’t he already known that? This was ridiculous—and said softly, calmly, reassuringly, “Mary, whatever he’s got on you, let me help.” Sherlock went to take a step toward her. Because this was Mary— _Mary_ —he’d composed a bloody _waltz_ for her and been the first to congratulate her on her child and it was _Mary_. 

“Oh, Sherlock, if you take one more step I swear I will kill you,” said Mary, without even a quiver of emotion, as if they’d never met before, as if they’d never been _friends_. 

And maybe—maybe—they never had been friends. 

God, he had been the world’s biggest idiot. He deserved to die here. 

But he wasn’t going to just give in. Moriarty hadn’t killed him; there was no way Mary _Watson_ was going to kill him. Killing him killed John Watson. Moriarty had known that. No matter the fact that Mary had captured John’s heart, it still remained that anyone who loved John Watson surely wouldn’t want to…

“No,” Sherlock said, and he even smiled a little as he said it. “ _Mrs. Watson_. You won’t.” Sherlock went to take a step. 

And Mary Watson pulled the trigger. 

***

John flew in the direction of the gunshot, and he shouted for Sherlock the whole way, getting no response. 

Which, honestly, could have been a bad sign but could also have meant that Sherlock was busy doing something and would say blankly, _Oh, did you want me to answer you? Was it important? Why would you think I’d got shot?_

John was still thinking that even as he barged his way into the only lit room on the second floor. Magnussen was in the room. And so was Sherlock, sprawled on his back, and not responding when John said urgently, “Sherlock? Sherlock.” John knelt next to him, feeling for a pulse. It was there, thready, faint, but there. “Sherlock, can you hear me?” He turned to Magnussen. “What happened to him?” 

“He got shot,” Magnussen answered. 

John was already pushing Sherlock’s coat aside, staring at the blood soaking through Sherlock’s shirt. “Oh, my…Jesus Christ,” said John, fumbling for his phone, dialing 999, and then he went calm, deadly calm, because this was what he did. He was a doctor. It didn’t matter that this was Sherlock. He was a _doctor_. 

“Sherlock, can you hear me?” he said, keeping his voice firm and crisp. “Listen to me. Stay with me here. Listen to my voice and stay with me.” There was a lot of blood. John was aware that there was little he could do right now, with no equipment whatsoever. He needed Sherlock’s stubbornness to kick in. He needed Sherlock to _stay with him_. 

John looked over at Magnussen, who was staring at the pair of them blankly. For a split second, John let murderous rage seep through the veneer of professional calm he was maintaining. “Who shot him?” he demanded fiercely. 

Magnussen just shook his head at him. 

Sherlock made a terrible choking coughing sound, and John turned back to him and grabbed his hand up in his and said, “Sherlock. I’m here, okay? I’m here, and you’re here, and we’re both staying here together. Don’t you dare do this to me. It’s a stupid bloody gunshot wound, and you’re Sherlock bloody Holmes, and that isn’t how this goes. So stay with me here.” 

Sherlock uttered a tiny little gasp for breath.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

“Can’t get down the street,” the cab driver said to them, sounding bored. 

“What do you mean, you can’t get down the street?” snapped Arthur, leaning forward to look ahead of them. “Just drive your car, just…” Arthur trailed off, staring at the emergency vehicles arrayed in front of them. 

“See?” The cab driver gestured. “They’ve got it all blocked off, haven’t they?” 

“Well, that’s not good,” remarked Eames. 

“Fuck,” breathed Arthur, and got out of the cab. 

Eames sighed and searched through his cash for something that wasn’t counterfeit, because he felt a little bad for the cab driver. “Cheers, mate,” he said, at least finding him some of the better counterfeit and pressing it into his hand. Then he followed behind Arthur, who was pushing through the crowd of curious onlookers, getting up to the barrier, where police stopped him.

“Sorry, sir, you can’t go through.” 

“Of course we can go through,” said Arthur. “We work in the building.” 

“Not tonight you’re not working in the building,” said the policeman, looking amused. 

Arthur huffed in exasperation and fell back into the crowd. 

Eames followed behind him, a bit amused despite the direness of the situation. 

Arthur said to one of the onlookers, “What happened?” 

They clamored over themselves eagerly to share how much they didn’t know. 

“Someone got shot, I think,” one said. 

“Magnussen, we think,” said another. 

“Great,” sighed Arthur, and turned to Eames. “Did you get it?” 

“Do you think I’m an amateur?” Eames asked, offended, and passed across the credentials he’d lifted from the policeman. 

Arthur shook his head, pushing them back. “You handle this one, you sound right.” 

“Don’t be so effusive with your praise, darling, you’ll make me blush,” said Eames, and then walked around the crowd to the other side of the barricade to flash the credentials and bark that they ought to be let in _immediately_. 

Which, of course, was done. Put enough authority in your voice, you could get people to do anything. 

“Impressed?” Eames asked Arthur, from the right side of the police barricade. 

“Flirt with me later,” Arthur said, looking around them and pausing with a frown. “I know him.” 

Eames glanced over his shoulder. The man, gray-haired and looking harried, seemed to know Arthur as well. He was frowning at him. Eames looked back at Arthur. “Jilted lover?” he asked casually. 

“This is serious,” Arthur said to him. “And apparently Sherlock drugged us both with Somnacin so he could come here and murder Magnussen so, you know, maybe you should—”

“What are you doing here?” interrupted a voice. “If you’ve come to steal a police car again—”

“That absolutely wasn’t me,” said Eames, because he automatically denied all accusations. 

The gray-haired man who had walked over to them blinked at him in confusion. “Not you. Him.” He jabbed a finger at Arthur. 

Eames looked at Arthur in delight that he supposed he was poorly concealing. “Did you steal a police car?” 

“No,” Arthur said. “And anyway, if I did, there were extenuating circumstances.” 

Eames tucked away in the back of his head: _Give Arthur a proper snog for stealing a police car_.

“Are you here because of Sherlock?” continued the man. “Because they’ve already taken him. John went with him.” The man looked grim. 

“So you arrested him?” said Arthur. 

The man looked startled. “What? No. He was shot. Isn’t that why you’re here?” 

***

For all that Arthur’s life had had a lot of death and danger, he hadn’t spent much time in hospitals. And he had, luckily, never spent any time sitting next to a hospital bed where the love of his life was hooked up to wires and fighting for his life. 

Arthur leaned against the wall and looked through the window into Sherlock’s room, where John Watson was slumped into the chair next to Sherlock’s bed, and Arthur thought that he wasn’t Eames and he wasn’t very good at reading people but he knew one thing and he knew it without a doubt: Sherlock adored John. In the deepest, darkest crevices of Sherlock’s brain, he was holding tight to the preciousness of John. 

Arthur took a deep breath and opened the hospital room door, knocking briefly on it. 

John looked up from his contemplation of Sherlock. He looked exhausted in a way that made Arthur feel a sort of bone-deep panic. He didn’t want to think about what he’d look like if anything ever happened to Eames, but it would probably look a lot like this. 

“Hi,” said Arthur cautiously, in case John wanted to throw him out and didn’t want company. 

“Hi,” sighed John, and scrubbed a hand over his face. 

Arthur took this as invitation, walking more fully into the room. “How’s he doing?” 

“I don’t know,” said John. “I mean, they say he’s going to be okay, but…I don’t know. He flatlined on the operating table. He literally _died_.” 

“So he rose from the dead,” remarked Arthur, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms and ankles. “That’ll help his God complex.” 

John snorted with what sounded like helpless laughter, and Arthur was pleased. 

And he said, “If there’s anybody you want us to track down and torture a bit, you know, we’d waive our fee.” 

John looked blank. “Anybody like who?” 

Arthur didn’t understand his blankness. “Like whoever shot him.” 

John shook his head a little bit. “We don’t know. Yet. I mean, obviously we’ll find him. Obviously.”

“Was it Magnussen?” asked Arthur, thinking that would make the most sense. 

“I don’t know. Maybe.” 

“I don’t think it was,” said Eames from the doorway, and then walked in and handed Arthur the coffee he’d procured. “I mean, if it was Magnussen, why didn’t he shoot you, too? Makes no sense. Leaving you alive leaves a mess, leaves a witness.” 

“Or maybe that’s what he was thinking and so he left John alive to make us think that,” pointed out Arthur. 

“You’d make a terrible detective,” Eames said. “You’re too suspicious.” 

“I’m just thorough,” Arthur said, and sipped his coffee, which was terrible. 

Eames looked at John and said, “Seriously, mate, if there’s anything we can do…” 

John shook his head a little bit. 

Eames looked around the room and then said, “Where’s Mary?” 

“Oh,” said John wearily. “I told her to stay home, get a good night’s rest. I mean, what good is both of us having a long sleepless night going to do?” 

“Yeah,” said Eames after a second. “Good point.” 

John went back to looking at Sherlock. 

Eames said, “We should go. We just wanted to check if you needed anything.” 

“I’m fine,” John said. “Thanks. Really. It was…decent of you to come.” 

“At times,” Eames said, “we strive to surprise people that way.” 

John managed a little smile at them, and Arthur followed Eames out of the room and down the hallway and tossed his terrible coffee at the first trashcan they reached. 

And he suddenly found himself with an armful of Eames, Eames wrapped around him, crushing him, his face pressed into his neck. 

“Okay?” Arthur asked, caught off-guard. 

Eames nodded. “Give me a second.” 

“We’re fine,” Arthur reminded him. “Check your totem.” 

“Let me ask you something,” said Eames into Arthur’s skin. 

“Mmm?” 

“Let’s say something terrible happened to someone you love. Your sister, or her kids, or James, or Philippa.” 

“Christ, Eames,” said Arthur, horrified. “Why would you say something like that?” 

Eames didn’t answer him. “Say you didn’t know if they were going to live or die. Would you want me at the hospital with you, waiting it out?” 

Arthur considered the question seriously. He closed his eyes and kissed Eames’s head and said honestly, “I don’t think I would be able to let you out of my sight. I think I’d be worried you were next.” 

“Exactly,” said Eames. “ _Exactly_.” 

Arthur wanted to ask Eames what momentous conclusion he’d drawn from John not wanting his wife near him while he waited for Sherlock to wake up, but instead he just breathed against Eames and let Eames breathe against him. 

A throat was cleared, and Arthur opened his eyes to see Mycroft Holmes standing off to the side, studiously peering at his umbrella. 

Arthur nudged Eames away and said, “What do they say?” 

“I want to know what _you_ say.” Mycroft dropped his umbrella, tapping the point sharply on the hospital tiles. “Someone murdered my brother tonight. They may not be successful, but that will not be for lack of trying on their part. Sherlock is not in a state to solve it, so I thought possibly you might have some ideas, murder being a speciality of yours.” 

“Murder is not a specialty of ours,” Arthur said. “At all.” 

“It wasn’t Magnussen, was it?” Eames said. 

Mycroft shook his head. “No gun, and he didn’t have much time to hide it. And, at any rate, no gunshot residue, and he wouldn’t have had much opportunity to get rid of that, either.” 

“So what does Magnussen say?” asked Arthur. “It happened in his house. He must have something to say.” 

“He says it was an unknown intruder. A burglary in progress. Sherlock was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” 

“Magnussen just happened to have two simultaneous burglaries?” said Arthur skeptically. “Your brother and your brother’s murderer?” 

“It does beg credulity, doesn’t it?” said Mycroft. 

“So Magnussen’s lying,” said Eames. “Because Magnussen deals in blackmail and this information is more valuable to him than it would be if he let you have it.” 

“But I want it,” said Mycroft coldly. “I want to know who tried to kill my brother.” 

“Well,” said Eames, “luckily for you, that _is_ our speciality.” 

***

After Arthur and Eames left Sherlock’s room, Mycroft wandered by. Fortunately, he didn’t ask any questions. John assumed he’d already read the police report. John had answered all of Lestrade’s questions while Sherlock had been fighting for his life in surgery. Now there was nothing any of them could do but wait and depend on Sherlock’s stubbornness. And Sherlock had proven himself plenty stubborn so far. 

Mycroft asked him if he needed anything, and John said no, and then Mycroft left as well, and John was relieved to have Sherlock all to himself. He’d kind of wanted Sherlock all to himself. Mary had offered to come and sit with him, of course, and he’d been queasy at the prospect of having to make awkward small talk all night, of having to answer her questions about where they’d been and what they’d been doing and how this had happened, how he’d done all of this incredibly dangerous stuff with a baby on the way. John didn’t want to say, _I can’t talk to you when my heart feels like it’s being crushed in my chest_.

“Okay,” John said to Sherlock, and glanced around to make sure no one was watching him before leaning forward and taking his hand in his. “So, there’s a possibility that I’ve been…a little caught up in everything at home. I know that. I didn’t stop by as much as I could have, and I didn’t call as much as I could have, and I…” John paused and looked at Sherlock’s very still form, his face even paler than it usually was. “I haven’t been around,” John admitted. “I haven’t been there for you.” 

And John knew, John knew he had good reasons for this, had a wife and a child on the way, but still, it was undeniable that he’d been denying himself Sherlock because he’d known that Sherlock represented dangerous allure to him. If John let himself, he’d basically be having a sex-less affair with Sherlock. An emotional affair, John supposed. And Mary had always been encouraging of John’s friendship with Sherlock, but John thought that Mary didn’t know, didn’t grasp…

John thought of Eames, sitting in a pub with him and giving him a lecture, and John had resented it at the time, had resented being condescended to like he was a child, had resented Eames’s casual assumption that he knew everything about John, like John was an open book. But John thought of it now. _You lead dangerous lives, you two_ , said Eames’s voice in his memory, _and something might happen, and you’ll kick yourself for never having admitted how you felt, for having wasted the time with him._

John looked at Sherlock and thought of how he’d died on that operating table, how it was only by some miracle that he was still there. John said, “I’m sorry, Sherlock. I’m an idiot, and I’ve made a mess, and I don’t have a way to fix it, but please know that I’m…that I… Don’t leave me. I can’t…I’m not alive unless you’re alive, okay? You were the spark that made me want to live again, and you’ve always been that spark, and I’m sorry I ever gave you the impression, ever, that you weren’t, that you were less important to me than… You’re so important to me, and I can’t live without you, and I know you’re fighting, and I know you’re probably exhausted, but you’ve just got a little bit further to go, Sherlock, and you’ll be there. Here. You’ll be back here, with me, and I’ll even take care of you during your convalescence, and I’ll let you sulk and pout and be an utter spoiled brat, and I will make you so much tea, okay? So much more tea than you would ever be able to drink. So if you’ve got any doubt in your head that you’re wanted, that you’re needed, wipe it out right now. I need you, I want you, more than anyone.” 

And it was odd to admit it out loud, but it was also true, thought John. It was so true that for the first time in a very long time he felt like he could take a deep breath. Which was odd, to be sitting next to Sherlock’s hospital bed feeling light and free, but everything seemed bright with clarity all around him. It was Sherlock, he thought. It had always been Sherlock. Eames might have been right all along. 

John put his head on Sherlock’s hospital bed and thought drowsily, _Good job your wife wasn’t here to hear all that._

***

Lestrade stopped by, poking his head in and looking at the still and silent Sherlock and saying, “Nothing yet?” 

John shook his head, not looking away from Sherlock. “It should be soon, I think. Any minute now.” John had to keep saying things like that because the other possibility was that Sherlock was drifting into a coma and they would lose their opportunity to grab hold of him and pull him out of it. 

“Coffee?” Lestrade asked. 

John could not think of anything he wanted less than coffee. He sighed and said, “Sure,” because it would give Lestrade something to do, and John still wanted Sherlock all to himself. 

And then Sherlock’s eyelids fluttered. 

John, who had been slouched in his chair, sat up slowly, worried he was imagining it. But no, they definitely flickered again. 

“Sherlock?” John stood up, took his hand to ground him, leaned over him, spoke urgently. “Sherlock. Can you hear me? Sherlock, open your eyes. You can do it.” 

Sherlock’s eyes flew open suddenly, and on a gasp he said, “Mary!” 

John tipped his head quizzically, so relieved to see those startling eyes that he just wanted to laugh for a thousand years. “Mary? No, not Mary, you prat, it’s me.” 

Sherlock’s eyes focused on him. “John,” he said. 

“Yes. John. Glad to see you got it right this time.” 

Sherlock’s eyes fell closed again. He was clearly exhausted. “Mary,” he sighed. 

John didn’t know what to make of Sherlock’s sudden obsession with Mary. Sherlock had always been fond of her but this seemed absurd. “She’s not here. I told her to stay home, get a good night’s sleep. The baby, you know.” 

“Baby,” murmured Sherlock. “John.” 

“Hey,” said John. “I am right here, and I’m going to stay right here. You sleep a little while longer. Probably the next time you wake up Mary will be here.”


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Arthur had research on Magnussen everywhere. He was not thrilled to death that Eames had therefore decided it was time to play tug-of-war with Tate. 

“No,” Arthur said. “Seriously. Do you see that I have papers _right there_?” 

“Arthur, you have papers _everywhere_ ,” protested Eames. “Where am I supposed to play with Tate?” 

“Outside,” Arthur suggested. “Outside where they have parks and not important criminal papers.” 

“Hello, Mrs. Hudson,” Eames said brightly. 

Tate bounded over to her, barking happily, leaving a trail of crumpled papers in his wake. 

Mrs. Hudson gave Arthur a suspicious look, then turned a look of beaming adoration onto Eames. Of course, thought Arthur sourly. _Of course_ she adored him. Everyone fucking adored Eames. 

“Eames, dear, I came to see if you’d like some biscuits; I just took a batch out of the oven.” 

“Oh, how lovely of you!” gushed Eames. “I’ll just come down to grab some to bring up for Arthur and myself, shall I?” 

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Hudson, sounding doubtful that Arthur deserved cookies. 

Arthur wanted to say _never mind, don’t worry about me_ , except, well, he did want some cookies. 

Tate bounded after Eames and Mrs. Hudson, making a mess, and Arthur sighed and tried to rearrange his papers. Eames said there was no need to be doing all of this research into Magnussen, it wasn’t even clear if there was still going to be a Magnussen job anymore. But Arthur didn’t have anything better to do, if you didn’t count Eames’s suggestion of strip poker, which Arthur wasn’t counting because he wasn’t playing strip poker in somebody else’s living room. 

“Look who’s here!” Eames called up the stairs, and Arthur, curious, walked over to the doorway to look. 

“John,” he said, pleasantly surprised, as John came trudging up the stairs in front of Eames. 

“Come in,” Eames said. “Sit down. Have a biscuit.” 

“No,” John said dazedly, as he sat. “I’m fine.” He looked around the room at all the papers Arthur had scattered. “Are these Sherlock’s?” 

“No, mine,” Arthur said. “Well, mostly. How is Sherlock?” 

“Getting better,” John said. “Getting stronger. Conscious for longer periods of time.” John met Arthur’s eyes, and Arthur was surprised by how hard and fierce John’s eyes were. “He says he doesn’t know who shot him.” 

“He didn’t see who it was?” Arthur clarified curiously. 

“That’s what he says.” John sighed, looking exhausted, and slumped back in his chair a little bit. “No idea. Can’t help us at all.” 

Arthur met Eames’s eyes briefly, then looked back at John and said, “You don’t believe him.” 

John lifted his eyes to Arthur, and he looked suddenly furious. “I think he’s lying. I think he knows exactly who shot him.” 

Arthur was a little too taken aback by the level of John’s fury to respond, so Eames asked the question for him. “Why wouldn’t he tell you?” 

“I think he doesn’t want me taking revenge. I think he doesn’t trust me not to…” 

There was a moment of silence. 

Eames was the one, again, to ask the question. “Do you want to know?” 

“Of course I want to know.” 

Arthur drew the obvious conclusion. “You want us to go into his head for you and find out?” 

John paused. “I don’t know if…” he said half-heartedly. “I mean, it’s a bit of a violation, isn’t it?” 

Arthur supposed that it was, although Arthur had been in dreamsharing so long that he’d become immune to the idea. He had bits of his head that were protected, off-limits, and he didn’t want those accessed, but the idea of someone just generally in his head, poking around, didn’t upset him. 

Eames said, “The thing about being in someone else’s head is that it’s only bad if they’ve got something to hide.” Eames lifted an eyebrow in John’s direction.

John looked back at him steadily for a long moment, and then John said, “This isn’t about me.” 

“Of course not,” said Eames lightly. “Never dreamed that it was.” 

“Eames,” inserted Arthur in warning. 

“I’m worried he’s not telling us because _he’s_ going to exact revenge,” continued John. “I’m worried he’s going to go off on his own and do some mad thing because that’s what he _does_ , and it is utterly, absolutely ridiculous when you consider that he’s supposed to be a genius but he always goes off to face the most dangerous things on his own.” 

“Probably,” remarked Arthur, who had been on the receiving end of that a couple of times, “because he’s trying to protect you.” 

This seemed to give John pause, as if he had never considered that before. Arthur knew why Eames spent a lot of time wanting to bash John over the head. 

John said finally, “Yes. You’re right. You’re probably right.” 

“So he’s probably still protecting you here, mate,” Eames pointed out. “That’s why he won’t tell you who shot him.” 

“I don’t want him to protect me,” John said, suddenly fierce. “We’re supposed to be a _team_. We’re supposed to be _partners_. He’s not supposed to rush into danger without me, he’s supposed to bring me with him so I can make sure he’s safe. We’re supposed to keep each other safe. How am I supposed to do that when he won’t talk to me?” 

There was a brief moment of silence. Arthur was relieved that Eames didn’t point out that John’s marriage might have caused Sherlock to question their arrangement. 

John said, breathing hard, “Yes. I want to do it. I want to go into Sherlock’s head.” 

***

“We should go in by ourselves,” Arthur said, as he packed up the PASIV. Arthur was in Official Point mode, brusque and down-to-business, focused on the task at hand. Eames, looking at him, could see very clearly that he was thinking of a million different checklists at once, making sure that there were no surprises, that everything would go the safest and most productive way, that they would find the information they needed with the minimum amount of fuss. 

John said, “No. Absolutely not.”

Arthur gave him a look. His who’s-running-this-show look. “Yes,” Arthur said. “You can’t go into Sherlock’s head.” 

“Why not?” demanded John. “I need to know who would—”

“We’re going to tell you,” Eames assured him placatingly. “We’re not going to keep it a secret. We’ll find out who it is and we’ll go after him together.” 

“Trust us,” Arthur added. “We’re not going to screw you over here.” 

“You probably won’t believe us,” Eames continued, “but we care about Sherlock, too.” 

“It isn’t that I think you don’t care about Sherlock,” John said. “It isn’t even that I don’t trust you.” 

“Well, it can’t be that you want in on the dream,” remarked Arthur, “because you hate dreams.” 

“It’s that it’s a huge violation, right?” said John. “I mean, it’s a huge violation of his privacy. We’re going into his _head_.” 

“It isn’t really,” said Arthur. “That isn’t really how it works.” 

John lifted his eyebrows skeptically. “You’re not going into his head?” 

“Yes,” said Arthur, “but—”

“So how is that not a violation of his privacy?” 

“Because it’s information you need to know,” Arthur said. “It’s a business transaction. Like hiring a PI. Let us do our jobs and—”

“No,” said John. “This isn’t a _job_. You can’t treat it like a _job_.” 

“But that’s exactly what it is,” Arthur said. “And that’s a good thing.” 

Eames knew what Arthur meant. It was how they maintained necessary distance in dreamsharing situations. This was their _job_. They had to think about it that way. 

But Eames also knew that John had never been comfortable with the concept of dreamsharing. It was the same way John had never been comfortable with his relationship with Sherlock. John needed things to fit into preordained boxes, and the fuzzy gray area that dreamsharers thrived in was anathema to John. 

So Eames said, “John. Trust us. We’ll handle this, and you can—”

“No,” John said sharply, and sucked in an anxious breath. “No. I can’t let you into his head by yourselves. It’s just… If anyone’s going to be in there… If it was Arthur, if it was Arthur, would you let anyone go into his head to mess around without going along with them? Anyone at all? Even your own mother?” 

Eames didn’t have a mother, but Eames took John’s point. If Arthur wasn’t aware enough to defend his own head, then Eames would have defended it for him, and Eames would never have let anyone in unsupervised. Eames would have gone along to soothe Arthur’s subconscious, to make sure the projections knew it was all okay, to make sure nothing happened in there that would upset Arthur. 

Never mind that Eames thought he had that right because he was in love with Arthur and Arthur was in love with him back, and maybe one of the promises you made when you decided on monogamy and on moving in together and on buying a bloody _dog_ , for fuck’s sake, was that you would protect each other’s heads if you had to. Never mind that Eames wasn’t sure John was aware that promises like that had been made with Sherlock. 

Eames knew that Sherlock considered such promises to have been made. 

Arthur knew that, too, which was why Arthur said, “Okay. You win.” 

***

Hospital dreamshares were always easy. There was so much going on around a hospital that PASIV devices frequently went unremarked on, especially when carried by Eames, because Eames had the ability to blend so much that he could almost disappear. And there were huge amounts of sedatives available.

Hospital dreamshares were even better when you had a doctor along. Arthur knew how to handle sedatives, of course, but it was nice that John determinedly said, “I can handle it, I’ll get us what we need,” and walked off to do it. 

Eames said, “We should work with doctors more often.”

Arthur said, “Funny how more doctors don’t want to join our wacky criminal teams, isn’t it?” 

Eames said, swinging around to face Arthur instead of watching John walk down the hall, getting down to business, “What do you think Sherlock’s head is going to be like?”

“Defensive,” Arthur said. “On lockdown. And probably panicked. I think he’s an emotional person who hasn’t been prepared for a dreamshare and his head will be both organized and vicious. What do you think?”

“Versailles,” Eames said. 

“What?” 

“I think we should go with something like the Palace of Versailles.” 

Arthur shook his head. “No. Let’s let him do it. Let’s just let him dream. I don’t want to do anything that will raise his suspicions.”

Eames shrugged. “Okay, fine.” 

Arthur’s phone vibrated in his jacket pocket, and he frowned and hoped it wasn’t Cobb. But when he pulled it out, it was blinking with an unknown number. 

Arthur lifted his eyebrows and answered, “Tommy’s Pizza Delivery.” 

Mycroft Holmes said, “Just what are you Three Musketeers up to?” 

Arthur said, “We’re solving your brother’s almost-murder.” 

After a moment, Mycroft said, “Carry on.”

***

John administered Sherlock’s sedative by lying cheerfully. “Painkillers,” he said, ruthlessly exploiting Sherlock’s weakness for good drugs. 

And then he sat by Sherlock’s bed and tried not to feel guilty as Sherlock fell asleep. Sherlock continued to insist he didn’t know who shot him, and John thought, _Liar_ , and tried to get him to open up about it without the drastic action of the dreamshare invasion. “Short or tall?” he asked. “Heavy or thin? Did they talk to you at all?” 

Sherlock made vague sounds and offered things like, “Short? Maybe? No, possibly tall.” 

John leaned forward and spoke urgently, giving it all one last chance. “Sherlock,” he said. “Why won’t you tell me? What are you scared of? Did they threaten me, too? Because you should know by now, right? We’re in this together. We’re in all of this _together_. Let’s bring this attempted murderer to justice _together_. Tell me who it was, and we’ll hunt him down. Who tried to kill you?” 

Sherlock looked at him, a long, calm, even look. John thought how Sherlock’s pale eyes were the most familiar things in the entire universe to him, and yet he had never really been capable of fully understanding them. He could not read their masked expression now. He thought they looked tired—probably the sedative—and possibly sad? But that couldn’t be right. It was sad, of course, to be almost murdered, but Sherlock was alive and surely that was reason to _celebrate_ , not be sad. 

Sherlock just said, “John. I’m sorry. I know you’re used to me remembering everything, but the time surrounding my gunshot wound is blank.” 

Sherlock _apologizing_. John marveled over that. He said, “Sherlock, you—”

“I do wish you’d leave the topic,” Sherlock cut him off irritably. “Your conversation is exceedingly tedious. If you can’t be interesting, you should go home and let me sleep.” Then he managed to flop over a little—even connected to all his tubes—and enter an immediate sulk, with that talent that John had never encountered in any other human being. 

John sighed and pinched at the bridge of his nose. Sherlock fell asleep. 

Eventually John took a deep breath and looked at the snoring Sherlock and thought, _This is for your own good_. He knew that Sherlock had the opposite view. _I am keeping this from you_ , Sherlock would have said, _for your own good_. But Sherlock was wrong. They were a team, together, and they had to face this together, and John was going to force Sherlock to realize it. 

So he stood up and walked over to Sherlock’s hospital room door and opened it. Arthur and Eames, who had been waiting out of sight, came around the corner immediately, walked briskly into the room, and blocked the door. 

“The nurses will—” John began. 

“The nurses won’t be a problem,” Arthur replied. 

John lifted his eyebrows. “Did you bribe the nurses?” 

“Absolutely not,” answered Eames. “Mycroft did.” 

“Mycroft?” John repeated. “You told Mycroft what we’re going to do?” 

“No, Mycroft figured it out,” said Arthur, setting the PASIV up. “And since Mycroft told us to catch his brother’s killer—or would-be killer—he totally approves of this.”

John scrubbed his hands through his hair and watched Sherlock sleep and hoped he wasn’t making a huge mistake with this. 

“Change your mind?” asked Eames. 

John looked at the bandage on Sherlock’s chest, where the bullet had insinuated itself into his chest. Sherlock had died on the operating table, John knew. Had flatlined. Had pulled himself back to life because Sherlock was stubborn, but Sherlock had _died_. There was no way John was leaving him to face his would-be killer alone. There was no way John was going to risk Sherlock’s dying again. His stubbornness might actually fail him a second time around. 

John straightened himself into military posture and said, “No. Not at all. Walk me through what we’re going to do.” 

“Straightforward,” Arthur said, unspooling a line and making as if to insert John’s needle for him. 

“I can do that,” John reminded him, taking the needle. 

“Right,” Arthur agreed. “Sorry. I forgot.” 

John took the needle and concentrated on inserting his IV while Arthur kept talking. 

“We’re going to let it be Sherlock’s choice of dream, so we’re not going to influence it. We’re just doing a single level, because I think that’ll be enough. I expect him to be defensive but not in an organized way that would give us trouble. And your presence in the dream may actually serve to placate the projections, so hopefully they’ll let us in.” 

“The projections will recognize me?” John said, because he hadn’t really thought about that. 

“Yes, our projections tend to respond subconsciously to the people we consciously like,” Arthur said simply. “And that’s actually something I want to make sure I prepare you for.” 

John experienced dread. He really, when you came right down to it, hated this dreamsharing business. “What?” 

Arthur took a deep breath. “You’re right that it’s a little bit of a violation of privacy. Sherlock’s going to be laid bare. His entire head is going to be there for you to see the inside of. Things he may not even consciously be aware of will be there. Eames and I pass over a lot of stuff because we’re used to being in the subconscious, but I want you to know: Sometimes you find out things about a person you might not want to find out.” 

“Things he doesn’t want me to know?” clarified John. 

“I didn’t say that,” Arthur said. “If he didn’t want you to know them, he’d hold them tight, play them close to his vest. Odds are you wouldn’t stumble across them. I mean things _you_ don’t want to know.” 

What the hell? thought John. What was that even supposed to _mean_? He _wanted_ to know who had tried to kill Sherlock. That was exactly why he wanted to go into Sherlock’s head. 

“Are you trying to frighten me?” asked John, because he didn’t know what other motivation Arthur might have. 

“Nope.” Arthur shook his head, concentrating on inserting his own IV where he’d taken a seat next to Eames. “I’m just giving you all the information. Once we get in the dream, we’ll separate and go off to try to see what we can learn. We’ll have the greatest odds of finding the right part of his subconscious that way.” 

“And if it’s dangerous in there?” John asked. 

“Shoot yourself out,” Arthur said. 

***

They opened their eyes to a stark room, clinical white and sleek metallic, and it took Eames a second to place it, because people didn’t normally envision morgues in their dreams. 

Arthur said, “It’s a morgue,” sounding caught between completely unsurprised and totally surprised. 

John echoed, sounding wistfully fond, “It’s a morgue.” 

Eames looked at John, gazing all around the morgue with mournful affection—the _morgue_ —and considered whether or not it had been a good idea, after all, to let John into this dream. Eames understood, of course—he could barely imagine how much he would cherish the inside of Arthur’s brain if he had come so close to losing it—but Eames also knew that sentimental sidetracks could be costly. Eames for the first time wondered if somehow John’s melancholy was going to affect the dreamscape they were going to encounter, much the way that Mal had so persistently stalked through dreams when Cobb was involved. 

Arthur must have had the same thought because he said brusquely, “All right, we have a job to do, we should do it and get out.” 

Eames sized John up and said, “Like a military operation.” 

The words seemed to stir some reptilian part of John’s brain that responded instinctively, pushed aside all emotional responses to move forward. He straightened a little and said, “Right. Yes. Exactly.” 

“It’s important we stay focused,” Arthur said. “Vitally important. That’s the only way we’ll be able to get the right information.” 

“I understand, Arthur,” John snapped, clearly growing impatient with Arthur’s tone. He flexed his hand a little bit. 

“Just making sure,” Arthur responded peevishly, because he didn’t do well with being talked back to in a dreamshare situation where he was in charge. “You’re not exactly a dreamsharing expert, and I don’t know if you’ll know your own power in here. Remember the flares in Moriarty’s head?” 

Eames looked between them, curious. “Why? What happened with the flares?” 

“They were like fucking fireworks,” Arthur replied. 

“I’m not going to have to send up flares, am I?” said John, clearly annoyed. “All we need to do is just…walk through Sherlock’s brain. So to speak. Right?” 

“Walk through Sherlock’s brain and find information he doesn’t want us to know,” said Eames lightly. “Should be a piece of cake.” 

“Walk through Sherlock’s brain and not get killed by marauding projections,” added Arthur.

John looked around the morgue, which was empty except for them. “So far, no projections at all.” 

Arthur said grimly, “Let’s not think about what might be inside those body drawers.”


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

John knew, intellectually, that he was inside Sherlock’s brain, in a Sherlock-constructed dream. But it was hard to really grasp that because of the fact that it felt so realistically like a morgue. It felt…like Sherlock should be there. 

Arthur made the comment about body drawers and John looked at the drawers and thought, _If I opened one of them, would Sherlock’s body be laid out in it?_ John didn’t know how dreams worked. Was Sherlock lurking somewhere in here? Was his traumatized subconscious curled into a body drawer defensively? 

“I vote we not do dreamer’s choice dreams anymore,” remarked Eames. “I mean, a morgue? Really? Bloody cheerful, isn’t it?” 

“He loves morgues, though,” John said, looking around him. “He feels at home in morgues. He…” _No one judges in a morgue_ , thought John, falling silent. _Dead people don’t judge_. It wasn’t really the first time he’d had the thought, but it made him sadder than it ever had before, to stand there and know that Sherlock’s brain looked like a morgue because it was one of the happiest places he could think of, because it was, to Sherlock, a perfect welcome. And it was empty. Suddenly the lack of projections around made perfect sense to John. 

And suddenly he wanted to get out of the morgue. Sherlock had nearly ended up in one of these, not so very long ago, and John wanted Sherlock’s brain to be vibrantly full of good things and not an echoing morgue like this. “So that’s it?” he asked. “I mean, do you think the information is in the body drawers? Should we start searching them?” 

“No,” said Arthur. “Sherlock isn’t going to keep anything important in the first room.” And just like that Arthur opened the morgue’s door. 

John followed Arthur and Eames out of the morgue and onto what was a landing at the top of a staircase. He followed their lead and peeked over the edge of the railing. The staircase stretched below them. 

“We can split it up,” Eames said. “Each start at a different floor. We’ll cover more ground more quickly that way.” 

Arthur nodded. 

John stared at the balustrade lining the staircase. He looked down the staircase again and furrowed his brow. He wasn’t sure…but this _could_ be the staircase from the rundown abandoned house where they’d found the pink lady’s body. Their first case together. Was the staircase in Sherlock’s mind palace really based off of the one they had encountered on the first night they ever spent together? John hadn’t thought about that staircase in years, but now he had a sudden, vivid memory of limping down it after Sherlock. Sherlock had forced him to pick up his life pace, to live more, now, immediately, and being confronted with the staircase again reminded him of it more than ever. 

“The farther we go down the stairs,” John said, looking down the landings below them, “is it the deeper we go into Sherlock’s head?” 

“Kind of,” said Arthur. 

“Dreaming is more art than science,” said Eames. 

John passionately hated this weird world of dreamsharing and his inability to truly comprehend it—or to just go with the Eamesian flow that it wasn’t fully comprehensible—but now that he had proposed this dreamshare, he felt like he had to see it through. Like he had a duty to Sherlock. 

“I’m going to take the lowest floor,” John said firmly. 

“It might be pretty far down,” Eames said, leaning over the balustrade. “I’m not exactly sure I can see the bottom.” 

John didn’t care. If the most important part of Sherlock was at the bottom, that was where he was going. “It’s not up for discussion,” said John sharply, in his Captain-Watson tone, and he wasn’t sure it would necessarily have any effect at all on Arthur and Eames and their obvious disdain for authority, but he started marching himself down the stairs without waiting for an argument from them. 

None came. 

***

“Should we flip a coin for who should start on this top floor and who should start in the middle?” asked Eames casually, and flipped his poker chip over his knuckles. Eames didn’t have nervous habits—everything Eames did was deliberately targeted toward whatever image he was projecting—but Arthur always thought that poker chip flipping thing was striving for casualness a bit too hard. 

Arthur frowned after John and thought things through. The identity of the murderer was likely to be in the middle floors somewhere. Sherlock doubtless had other, more important secrets to protect that he would be burying down on the lower floors, and Arthur wasn’t really interested in those and thought John could handle them. In fact, it might actually do John some good to get such direct exposure to the heart of Sherlock’s head. Not that Arthur was playing matchmaker here, because, well, he’d missed the signs of adoration in Eames’s head, and Arthur, unlike John, actually knew what he was doing when it came to dreamsharing. But Arthur just thought that maybe John would come out of this with some understanding of how terrible his marriage had been for Sherlock. 

So Arthur didn’t care that John wanted the lower floors and actually thought it might be a good idea from a personal point of view. Which left him with the professional point of view to deal with, and his view on that was that the identity of the killer was most likely to be in the middle floors. But Arthur didn’t want to hog the site of the action. 

He said, “Fine, let’s flip for it. Heads, I pick which floors I take.” 

Eames replaced his poker chip with a coin and flipped it. “Tails,” he said. 

“I swear that you always rig that,” grumbled Arthur. 

“Darling, don’t be a sore loser,” said Eames lightly. “I’ll take the middle floors.” Eames winked at him, then turned to head down the stairs. 

Arthur grabbed his arm before he could go and turned him back and kissed him. 

“Hello,” Eames murmured into his mouth, hand caught in his hair. 

“Be careful,” Arthur said. “And thank you for, you know, everything.” 

“What a lovely expansive statement,” commented Eames. “In one fell swoop you have expressed gratitude for everything from my very excellent blowjobs to my extraordinary shepherd’s pie—”

“Your shepherd’s pie is terrible.” 

“Ah, but what about my blowjobs?” 

“Acceptable,” said Arthur. 

“Prick,” said Eames fondly, and kissed the side of his head. 

Arthur said, “None of this changes the fact that you fucking cheat.” 

“I don’t cheat when it matters,” said Eames seriously. 

Arthur breathed him in and thought, _Yeah. How did I get so fucking lucky?_

Eames said, breaking the mood the way he sometimes did in that sixth-sense way of knowing when that had to happen, “Let’s go catch a murderer.” 

Arthur nodded. 

***

The staircase was impossibly long. Eames walked down a random number of flights before deciding he was somewhere in the middle and, fuck it, the search had to start somewhere. So he opened the nearest door. 

The hallway he was standing in was institutional in nature. Sherlock’s brain had created it flawlessly. Sometimes dreams could be sloppy, could ring untrue. Eames had worked with terrible architects whose dreams felt weirdly lopsided the whole time they were happening, with little skewed details nibbling at you unpleasantly, making the hair on the back of your neck stand up. But Sherlock’s dream was as impeccable as that of any architect Eames had ever worked with. Sherlock’s dream held up to even Arthur’s high standards. Sherlock, Eames thought, could have had a hell of a career in dreamsharing. 

All of which meant that Eames placed the hallway as institutional right away, because it had that unmistakable feeling to it. A hospital, Eames thought, as he walked carefully down it. There were no other people around, but the pattern on the tiles, the color of the wall, the look of the closed doors he was passing, all screamed _hospital_ to Eames. 

But there was something wrong, Eames thought. Something off. Something beyond just the utter silence and emptiness. Was it an abandoned hospital? Why was Sherlock’s brain so eerily projection-less? Was that a symptom of some sort of remarkable control? If so, Eames had never encountered anything like it before. Arthur was famous for being able to control his projections beautifully, but even Arthur couldn’t avoid having projections _period_. 

Eames stopped in front of one of the doors to examine it more closely. There was a name on it. _R. Frankland_. The name didn’t mean anything to Eames. He wondered if it would have meant something to Arthur, with his meticulously researched files that Eames hadn’t paid any attention to. _R. Frankland_. The would-be murderer? Here behind a random doorway in a random hallway? It seemed unlikely. For starters, there were a number of identical doorways along the hallway. Any one of them could lead to the would-be murderer. 

Eames tried the door. The handle turned easily under his grasp. Well, that was that, then. Surely Sherlock would have kept the information about whoever had shot him slightly more protected. The very act of keeping a secret caused one’s subconscious to lock doors, at the very least.

Eames stuck his head into the door just to make sure. 

The room was bare, except for a man standing in it, shackled to the wall by both his wrists and his ankles. Eames thought this seemed a little over-the-top, considering that he appeared to be a very mild-mannered man. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked, pleasantly enough. 

Eames didn’t have a chance to respond, because at that moment a shout went up from down the hallway. Eames backed out of the room in time to see security guards rounding the corner, all obviously heading for him.

Sherlock’s projections had shown up. 

***

Arthur was walking down a hallway that seemed to breathe wealth. It was all highly polished gleaming wood. He wondered if it was a real place or if Sherlock’s brain was just the type of place to make hallways that looked like _this_. 

Arthur kept passing doors, and kept looking at them thoughtfully, unsure if he should try to venture down any of them. Sherlock’s brain was an enormous labyrinth, and he thought he needed to be systematic about exploring it. This was why he preferred to go into a head with a pre-set dreamscape, because they made them closed loops where the desired information had to be kept close. A genuine, bona fide head was an expansive place you could be lost in for years; it was why Limbo was so terrifying. 

Arthur took a deep breath and refused to let himself be thrown by all of the unknown variables. He was a good improviser when he was forced into it, and this was an extraction like any other, where things went wrong and he had to fix them. 

With that in mind, Arthur opened a door. 

Immediately an enthusiastic Irish setter, barking joyfully, came running over to him and placed its front paws on him and kept barking joyfully. 

Arthur stared at him, surprised. “A dog,” he said out loud. “There’s a dog here.” Not every head thought to make animal projections. Arthur hadn’t thought Sherlock’s head would be the scene of such whimsy. Maybe he’d been underestimating him.

And a _friendly_ dog. That was, in Arthur’s opinion, even more surprising. He had expected Sherlock’s head to be defensive, not to send him a _dog_ in greeting.

The Irish setter stopped trying to slobber all over him, dropped back down to all four paws, and went running off down a corridor to the left. Arthur dreamed himself up a Moleskine and a pen and tried to make himself a map so he could find his way back. Not that it really mattered, because time would eventually run out on the PASIV. But Arthur at least liked to try to be systematic. 

The corridor appeared to be identical to the one Arthur had been walking down earlier, all wood gleaming with hushed wealth. Arthur, after a moment, hesitated, then leaned over and tried the nearest door. 

He was instantly met by an enthusiastic Irish setter who came joyfully barking over to him and leaped to put its paws up on Arthur in greeting. 

Arthur scratched behind the dog’s ears grimly, thinking that that answered that. Sherlock had sent a friendly dog because there was absolutely nothing here to protect. He’d created a closed loop. 

“You know,” Arthur told Sherlock’s dog projection, “you’d make one hell of a dreamshare architect.” 

The dog wagged its tail. 

***

Sherlock’s dream staircase descended for much longer than John had anticipated. John felt like he walked and walked and walked and walked and the bottom still wasn’t in sight. He was going to walk down the stairs for his entire time in this dream, he thought. 

Which wasn’t good, because walking down the stairs was mindless and had him thinking about the pink lady case, about meeting Sherlock, about not having any idea what to make of him, just knowing that he wanted to know more about him. John wished that, instead of dreamsharing, time travel was the weird sci-fi thing that existed, so that he could go back and tell the John Watson who looked up Sherlock Holmes on the Internet that night: _Just wait. He’s going to be the most important relationship of your life._

John’s shoes echoed on the steps as he walked down them, the sound bouncing all around him uncannily. It was like there was no one else in the entire universe with him. He had to suppress a desire to just turn and run back toward the top, shouting for Arthur and Eames, for the assurance that he hadn’t lost his mind.

Which was _ridiculous_. Sherlock had _died_ and now John Watson— _Captain John Watson_ —was going to get spooked by some perfectly safe outing that would achieve justice? This was nothing to be afraid of. This was just _Sherlock’s head_. John had been in tons of much more dangerous situations.

Then again, he thought. This was _Sherlock’s head_. What more dangerous place existed than that?

He almost laughed at the thought, and then he worried that maybe he was getting hysterical, and then he came to the end of the stairs. 

Bottom. He was far as he could go in Sherlock Holmes’s head.

And, now that he was here, he didn’t know what to do. 

There was a single door ahead of him. Around him in every other direction was only darkness, a darkness that felt flimsy and insubstantial, like maybe it was where the world ended. John didn’t know how dreams worked. Maybe, when you hit the end of them, they just…turned dark. 

But there was a single door ahead of him. He couldn’t make it out very clearly, in the wavering light down here, but he could see it was there. 

“Maybe you desire something first?” asked a voice to his right. 

John, startled, glanced in that direction and half-expected to see no one there, half-expected that the voice would be disembodied, drifting out of the gloom.

But there was a person there. A…butler? He looked like a butler.

_Oh my God_ , thought John. _Trust Sherlock Holmes’s brain to have a butler_.

The butler was looking at him expectantly, and John tried to recall the question he’d been asked, and failed. He’d been too surprised by the sound of a voice to pay attention to what it was saying. “Sorry?” he said. 

“It’s a long journey,” said the butler. “Is there anything you desire?”

John didn’t know what to say to that. Was this Sherlock’s brain being…solicitous? John would never have expected such a thing and had no idea what to make of it. He was tempted to ask for a cup of tea, just to see what would happen. 

But he was getting sidetracked. This butler clearly wasn’t Sherlock’s would-be killer. If he was, Sherlock’s brain had a funny way of indicating that. 

John looked a little more closely at the butler, so he would be able to describe him once he was out of the dream, just in case, and then said, “No, thank you, there’s nothing I desire.”

“Yes,” replied the butler. “Isn’t that always the way with you?” 

That gave John pause. “Sorry?” 

“You don’t desire,” said the butler.

John was confused. “Don’t desire what?” 

The butler didn’t answer the question. The butler gestured to the door in the distance and said, “The journey ends where you suspected it might.”

“I didn’t have any suspicions,” John protested, but the butler disappeared in front of him, just as inexplicably as he’d appeared in the first place.

John looked back toward the door, which was now illuminated by a spotlight, and realized that he was lying. He _had_ had a suspicion, evident to him now that it had been confirmed.

Because the door in front of him was the doorway to 221B. 

***

“Bloody fucking hell,” panted Eames, as Sherlock’s projections started shooting at him. Bloody hell, he wished people would watch fewer action movies so that their projections would stop being so fucking gun happy. 

Eames was running down hospital corridors now with very little strategy other than to keep ahead of the projections, but the projections were coming out of the woodwork. Literally. They were drifting out of the walls at him.

And they were fucking scary. Apparently Sherlock’s projections were all sodding murder victims or something. Whatever they were, they were fucking unpleasant to look at, even more so when they were trying to trip Eames up with some piece of martial arts. Eames deflected, trying not to look too closely at maggot-infested eye sockets and pus-oozing stumps of arms. 

Eames dreamed himself up an Uzi and turned and sprayed a torrential wave of bullets toward the projections following him, all of which were too polite for such things and using ineffective revolvers. 

Not that it mattered, because he ran into a wall after that. Basically literally. So he’d bought himself some time but now he was completely trapped.

“Fuck,” he swore, looking at the wall. Sherlock’s projections were going to kill him, and he was never going to live that down in front of Arthur. Although, frankly, this was all Arthur’s fault, since Arthur had wanted to come take this job and also Arthur was too dependable and therefore Eames was a little out-of-practice with having to fight alone. 

Not that he would admit that to Arthur, or Arthur would be appalled that Eames ever took jobs without him.

As Eames was pondering exactly what the look on Arthur’s face would be once he realized Eames had been evicted from the dream—Eames thought it would be a particularly Arthurian combination of smugness and dismayed concern—and listening to the projections catch up, with their occasional gunshots thrown in, he abruptly realized that there was a door in the wall. It was mostly hidden, and he would never have noticed it if not for the fact that his hand had drifted over the nearly imperceptible hinge. 

There was no question about it. The projections were closing in. Eames went with his only option and kicked his way through the door.

He found himself in a round, padded cell, face-to-face with a straitjacketed Moriarty. 

“No, seriously, bloody fucking _hell_ ,” complained Eames, just as the projections went slamming into the door he’d closed behind him.

Eames almost thought he’d rather be out there with them. Moriarty was chained, at least, so it didn’t seem like he could hurt Eames much, but he was still fucking creepy.

Moriarty demanded petulantly, “Where’s Sherlock?”

“All around you,” Eames responded truthfully. 

“Who are you?” Moriarty demanded. 

“Someone whose head you tried to mess with once, and I did not appreciate that, mate, let me tell you.” 

“I mess with a lot of heads,” Moriarty replied. “You’re going to have to be more specific.” 

“Eames,” said Eames, because what the hell, this was just Sherlock’s projection of Moriarty, and maybe this conversation would pass the time until Eames was no longer cornered in here. “My name is Eames.” 

“Eames,” repeated Moriarty. “I’m going to skin you and make you into shoes, Eames.” 

“This conversation isn’t that great,” Eames decided, and tipped his head back to consider if he could somehow rappel out of this room. 

“Well, aren’t you all uppity?” sniffed Moriarty. “Have a lot of good conversations where you come from? Good conversations with Sherlock? Well, give Sherlock a message from me.” Moriarty settled his dark, cold, reptilian eyes steadily on Eames. “Tell him I’m coming for him. Tell him we’re the same. Tell him he’ll never save John Watson. John Watson is in terrible, terrible danger.” 

Eames felt a chill rush over him and thought, _This is ridiculous, he’s just a projection_ , but still. 

Moriarty grinned toothily, terrifyingly, and then Eames pitched backward through the door without warning, finding himself in a thoroughly empty hallway. 

***

John stood in front of the door to 221B—the door that for many years had been _his_ —and couldn’t bring himself to open it. 

Because it wasn’t actually 221B. It was the 221B in Sherlock’s head, and surely Sherlock would keep all of his most precious thoughts locked safely behind this door. Surely John wouldn’t ever be able to get in. 

John reached out and tentatively grasped the doorknob and the door miraculously opened. 

He stood and regarded the interior that had been revealed. It looked exactly like home, only somewhat more cluttered. His coat was draped over the balustrade. His old cane was leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. 

John couldn’t help but smile, and then he stepped through the doorway. How silly of him to have been apprehensive about this. It was just _home_. 

He walked up the staircase and into the lounge, and then he paused. Because this room didn’t look the way he had expected it to look. When John stood in this room in real life, in the waking world, it screamed Sherlock Holmes to him. But now it seemed stripped of Sherlock’s presence. The only presence in this room was…him. 

It was his chair, and his medical textbooks, and his laptop. The spots on the wall where Sherlock had painted the smiley face, or where he erected things about his latest cases, were now devoted to John: his initials, photographs of him, printed-out pages of his blog. 

John walked over to the wall to look at some of what was covering it, amazed. There were far more photographs of him in this room than had ever existed in real life. Had Sherlock been taking mental snapshots of him? For how long? Not that John minded, he just would have liked to have known—

John cut his own thoughts off, looking around the room again, things finally starting to click in his head. He was in the most cherished part of Sherlock Holmes’s brain, 221B, and he had been granted entry without question. He had been presented with a _butler_. And he had walked in to find the entire room devoted to him. _Is there anything you desire?_ the butler had asked him. _Sherlock’s subconscious_ had asked him, while carefully keeping an entire room devoted to John. 

Maybe more than one room. 

John turned, curious now, wanting to explore the rest of the flat where he presumed lived here in Sherlock’s head, except that, upon turning, he found himself face-to-face with his wife, in her wedding gown, holding a gun on him.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

“Mary,” he said, because that was his first instinct. He knew that he was in a dream, but confronted with his wife in front of him, he said her name unthinkingly. 

She didn’t respond. Nor did the gun in her hand waver. 

John tipped his head at the symbolism of this. In the very deepest, darkest recesses of Sherlock’s mind, there was a room devoted to John Watson, and in that room was John Watson’s wife, holding a gun. 

Was that how Sherlock felt about his marriage? Did Sherlock feel like Mary had shot at the very heart of him? 

“Mary,” John said. “Put the gun down.” 

Mary didn’t put the gun down. Mary kept it aimed at him. 

John sat on the floor and put his head in his hands and suddenly wanted to be out of this dream. He had gone into Sherlock’s head, and what he had discovered there was _him_. Him, everywhere, woven through the entire infrastructure of Sherlock’s brain. He was there, and also there was Mary, shooting, destroying everything. 

It was undeniable, this symbolism. It was…

John lifted his head and looked at his wife, as she had looked on the day of their wedding. When Sherlock had given that beautiful speech, when Sherlock had said that he loved him most of anyone in the world, and John had accepted all of the flowery flourishes of _Sherlock_ —the original waltz, the carefully planned stag night—and had never made the connection that what they all meant was that _he_ lived at the heart of Sherlock; that Sherlock’s mind palace was built around a flat devoted to John; and that Mary as John’s bride infected that flat with foreboding, signaled the end of this world Sherlock had created. 

“Christ,” John sighed, and scrubbed at his eyes. What was it Arthur had said before they had started all of this? That John might find things out that he didn’t want to know? 

John got back to his feet wearily and walked over to Mary. She didn’t flinch as he approached her. She just kept gazing at him impassively, apparently not even recognizing him. 

When he reached for the gun in her hand, she pulled the trigger. But that was what John had wanted anyway. 

***

Arthur had lost count of how many times he had done the Irish setter loop. No matter which way he tried to go, he ended up back in the corridor with the dog. He’d even tried climbing up through a hole he blasted in the ceiling or down through a hole he blasted in the floor. It didn’t matter. He stayed with the fucking Irish setter until the clock ran down. 

When he woke in Sherlock’s hospital room, he sat up and pulled his cannula out and said, “So that was useless on my end.” 

John had already pulled his cannula out, the IV dangling next to him. He looked dazed, but that could just have been the aftereffects of being in the dream. Arthur knew that it sideswiped people who weren’t used to it, or who didn’t take to it. Mal had used to call it “dream-sickness,” like motion-sickness. 

Eames said, “Mine was useless _and_ terrifying, so I bet I’ve got you beat.” 

“Mine wasn’t terrifying,” Arthur said, keeping his eyes on John. “Just tedious. I was in a hallway with a dog. I couldn’t get out of the hallway.” 

“Sherlock built a maze you couldn’t crack?” said Eames. 

Arthur tore his eyes away from John so that he could give Eames an _I don’t really like you_ look, even though he knew Eames ignored those looks because Eames was annoying. 

Which Eames immediately proved by simply grinning at Arthur. 

“I was in a mental hospital,” he continued. “With Moriarty.” 

“Did you kick him in the balls for us?” asked Arthur. 

“No, I was too scared to go near him,” replied Eames. 

Arthur looked back at John, who seemed to have no reaction to the mention of Moriarty.

Eames said thoughtfully, “And what did you spend your dream time doing, John?” 

“Me?” echoed John, as if surprised at being addressed, and then answered slowly, “Nothing. Nothing, really. It was just…no killer.” 

Eames glanced at Arthur, his eyebrows lifted, clearly looking for Arthur’s lead on how oddly John was behaving. 

Arthur decided against pressing it. John was touchy on the subject of Sherlock, and John had gone right down to the inner layer of Sherlock’s head. Arthur had been to the innermost part of Sherlock Holmes’s brain, and what had lived there had been a shrine to John Watson. If that was what John had discovered, then it made total sense that he was acting so out of it. 

“So,” announced Arthur somewhat briskly, “we are no closer to finding Sherlock’s killer than we were before.” 

“Attempted,” John murmured. 

“What?” said Arthur. 

“Attempted killer,” John said. “You said ‘killer,’ but Sherlock’s here and alive and he’s going to get better. So the killer merely _attempted_.” John said it fiercely, looking at Sherlock. 

“Right,” Arthur agreed. “Sorry. Attempted killer.” 

“I think we can safely assume that your dog didn’t pull any trigger,” remarked Eames. 

“What about Moriarty?” said Arthur. “I mean, we know that Moriarty’s dead, right?” 

“We all killed him,” Eames reminded Arthur. “Several times over. We would have to collectively be the most incompetent pack of murderers to ever roam the land.”

“The information’s in there somewhere,” said Arthur, frustrated. “We missed it.” 

“Maybe we’ve got it, we’re just not understanding it,” said Eames. “John, what exactly was it like on the lowest levels?”

After a second, John said, “There was a butler.” 

“Oh my God, I bet the butler did it,” said Eames. 

“What butler?” asked Arthur in exasperation. 

“I don’t know,” said Eames, shrugging. “I’ve just always wanted to say that.” 

“Not helpful,” said Arthur. “Should we try it again? The sedative should—”

“I’ve got to go home,” John said, standing. 

Arthur said in disbelief, “You’re going home?” He knew that John seemed off-balance, but he’d thought he’d shake it off. 

“But we don’t know anything,” Eames protested. “I thought you wanted to catch Sherlock’s attempted killer.” 

“Good night,” John said, as if that was a remark that made any sense, and then he turned and walked out of the hospital room. 

“What the hell?” said Eames. 

“Do you know what lives at the bottom of Sherlock’s brain?” 

“No matter what it is, I bet it represents a penis,” said Eames. 

“It doesn’t represent a penis,” said Arthur. “It represents John Watson. When you reach the heart of Sherlock’s brain, you reach the part devoted to John Watson. Do you know what’s at the heart of my brain?” 

Eames considered him. “Am I being too arrogant if I say that I hope that it’s me?” 

“Of course it’s fucking you. You’re the thing I worry about most in this world. Losing you. So I keep you as close as I can. It’s how Sherlock keeps John.” 

“Do you think John noticed?” asked Eames. 

Arthur gave him a look. “How could he miss something like that?” 

“Deep denial,” Eames replied drily. 

Arthur looked at Sherlock, still sound asleep in the hospital bed, and sighed, “Fuck.” 

“Did you think it would be easy? To crack his head?” 

“We should try again. Tomorrow, maybe. Just us. We’ll use one of our own dreams this time.”

“Snow fortress?” asked Eames hopefully. 

“Why are you so obsessed with snow fortresses?”

“Because I am bloody hot on skis,” said Eames knowingly. 

Arthur didn’t even bother to deny it. He just said, “Fine. Snow fortress,” because, well, Eames _was_ pretty hot on skis. In a dream. In real life, it had turned out, Eames was a terrible skier. He was much better, he said, at the _apres_ -ski seduction. 

Arthur’s cell phone rang. Arthur sighed, “Fuck,” again and glanced at it without interest, already knowing it was Mycroft. 

Eames seemed to already know the same thing. “Give it,” he said, holding his hand out. “I’ll deal with him for you.” 

There were a lot of moments when Eames drove him crazy. There were also a lot of moments when Arthur was struck by the realization that he loved him more than anything on the planet, and those moments were usually triggered by something relatively innocuous, like Eames recognizing instinctively when Arthur had reached his limit. 

Arthur handed across his cell phone and said, “Make it quick and then find us a supply closet and I’ll blow you for this.” 

Eames lifted an eyebrow and said, “I should take your phone calls for you more often,” and then held the phone up to his ear. “Arthur’s phone…Oh, hello, Mycroft!...Yeah, we have no news to report. We need to try again. Have a lovely evening. Cheerio!” Eames tossed Arthur’s phone back to him and said, “Let’s see about that supply closet.”

***

“You okay?” was what Mary kept asking, her eyes keen on him as he tried to go through the typical motions of an evening at home. And all John kept seeing were Mary’s eyes as she’d pulled a trigger on him in Sherlock’s head. 

“Fine,” he tried to say convincingly. He didn’t want to sound like his brain wouldn’t stop turning over the experience of being inside of Sherlock, of being privy to Sherlock’s inner workings, of the fact that Sherlock’s inner workings were all devoted to _him_. 

He could tell he wasn’t succeeding in convincing Mary that he was okay. Mary kept casting him thoughtful, concerned looks as they watched telly and got ready for bed together. 

Eventually, as she cuddled up next to him, he said, “I’m just worried about Sherlock,” which was close enough to the truth. 

“I thought the doctors said he was going to survive,” said Mary. 

“Yeah,” said John. “He is. That’s not what—I mean, it’s still upsetting, right? This whole thing, how close I came to…” 

Mary turned in his arms. There wasn’t really enough light for him to see her expression clearly, but her voice when she spoke was heavy with sympathy. “Of course. Oh, John, of course.” Her hands smoothed his hair back, and he knew she was trying to be soothing, but he wanted to shrink away from her. He felt like he was on sensory overload, and it was all _too much_. “It’s going to take time. This sort of thing is traumatic. I understand.” 

John made a noncommittal noise and closed his eyes and wished for the world to go back to normal. Whatever “normal” was. He didn’t even know anymore. Was it a few days earlier, happily married to Mary with a baby on the way? Was it farther back than that, in the Baker Street days of his life? It was another thing, he thought, that he had no clue about. 

Mary said, “Has he remembered who shot him? Said anything that would help you catch them?” 

“No,” John said. “He says he can’t remember.”

“He’s probably blocked it out,” said Mary. 

John snorted. “As if Sherlock Holmes’s brain ever blocks anything out.” 

Mary was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “You should get some sleep, John. You’ve been running yourself ragged. Sherlock will still be there in the morning when you wake up.” 

“Yeah.” John forced himself to reach a hand out to cup around Mary’s head— _normal_ , he thought, this was all perfectly _normal_. “Good night.” 

“Good night, love,” said Mary happily, and pressed a kiss to his mouth, and then settled against him, snuggled in close. 

John stared up at the ceiling, thinking about Sherlock. Eventually he became aware that Mary was snoring beside him. He wondered vaguely how late it was. He shifted to his side, telling himself to be serious about falling asleep. But when he closed his eyes, he saw the butler in Sherlock’s head, asking him what he desired. Or, even worse, he saw a shrine devoted to him that Mary was destroying. 

John took a deep breath and got out of bed. 

***

Eames woke to Tate barking. 

“Someone’s coming,” Arthur hissed, and grabbed his gun from underneath his pillow and rolled out of bed. 

The “someone” wasn’t even bothering to be quiet about it. The footfalls on the staircase were heavy, and then the “someone” called Eames’s name. 

Arthur looked across at Eames with a cocked eyebrow. “Why has John Watson come to see you in the middle of the night?” 

“Let’s go see, shall we?” said Eames, heading toward the door. 

Arthur tossed a T-shirt to Eames that hit him solidly on his cheek. “Put a shirt on first, won’t you?” 

“Worried you’ll be distracted by my chiseled physique?” Eames leered. 

“No, worried John Watson will be,” rejoined Arthur drily. “Just put the shirt on.” 

“Why would John Watson ogle my body?” asked Eames with mock innocence as he pulled the shirt over his head. “He doesn’t care for men.” 

“Deep denial,” said Arthur, pulling the door open. 

“Also there is the fact that my chest is irresistible,” said Eames, following Arthur out the door. 

“Who told you that?” asked Arthur. 

“Some bloke named Matt. Or maybe it was Mitt. They all run together after a while.” 

“Your chest grows even more resistible by the moment,” remarked Arthur. 

Eames laughed and kissed the back of Arthur’s neck, just at his hairline, because he couldn’t resist it, and then he called down from the top of the stairs to John Watson, waiting for them at the bottom, “What is it we can do for you, Dr. Watson?” 

“Did I wake you?” asked John. 

Tate ran down the stairs, running circles around John and barking in alarm. 

Arthur lifted his eyebrows at John as he moved past him into the kitchen and said to Tate, “Hush,” which had the effect of Tate following Arthur into the kitchen to bark instead. 

Eames said, “No, Arthur and I never sleep. We’re like vampires.” 

“Vampires sleep!” Arthur called from the kitchen. “They sleep in coffins!” 

“Who made you the world’s expert on vampires?” Eames called back. 

“Shut up, I’m making you tea,” came Arthur’s reply. 

“Tea?” Eames asked John. 

“Yeah,” said John. “Fine. Whatever. You lot know what you’re doing, right?” 

Eames regarded John, vibrating with obvious agitation, and felt energized by the glow of curiosity. Whatever was going on here, he sensed, was something noteworthy. “Clarify,” said Eames. “I mean, it is generally true that we know what we’re doing, but we’re iffy when it comes to gardening, utterly rubbish with tomato plants.”

“With the dreaming,” John said impatiently. “You know what you’re doing with the dreaming.” 

“John, that’s the understatement of the century. We wrote the manual when it comes to the dreaming.” 

“So if I told you what I saw in Sherlock’s head, you could tell me what it means,” said John. 

Arthur came into the lounge with two cups of tea, one of which he handed to John, saying, “It isn’t difficult to interpret a shrine in the center of someone’s head.” 

Eames took the tea from Arthur absently, focused on John. “Is that what you saw in Sherlock’s head?” 

John paced, holding the tea but not drinking it. Which was good, because Eames thought he’d spill it all over himself if he tried drinking at that moment. “It was all about me. It was all about _me_.” 

“That was fairly predictable, John,” said Eames. 

“No.” John used his free hand to point a determined finger at Eames. “No, it was _not_ predictable. Sherlock doesn’t feel things like that. Sherlock doesn’t—Sherlock _doesn’t_.” 

“Sherlock does,” said Eames calmly, sipping his tea. “That’s my expert interpretation of what you’ve described. Perhaps you’d like Arthur to give a second opinion?” 

“He…” said John, and then trailed off uncertainly. “He…” John sat on the sofa, looking bewildered. “For my stag night, he took us to pubs on streets where we’d investigated murders.” 

“Romantic,” commented Arthur, from where he was leaning against the wall by the fireplace. 

John closed his eyes for a moment. “I married Mary because I wanted… I didn’t know it would destroy him.” 

“Look,” said Eames. “‘Destroy’ is a rather harsh word. He’s been doing okay, hasn’t he? I mean, getting along and—”

“No, you don’t understand what she did to his shrine. In his head.” 

“She was there?” asked Arthur, sounding much more interested than he had just a few minutes earlier. 

“Yeah,” said John. “In her _wedding dress_. How’s that for symbolism?” 

“As symbolism goes, it’s fairly transparent,” noted Eames. “I’d have expected better.” 

“So Mary was there in her wedding dress,” said Arthur. “That doesn’t destroy anything, John. That just means that his head is trying to find a way to assimilate to his new reality, to incorporate her into his devotion to you.” 

“No.” John shook his head. “No, that’s not what was happening.” 

Eames gave him a look. “You came to us because we’re the experts, mate,” he pointed out. “Maybe you’d better listen to us.” 

“No,” John said, frustrated. “She wasn’t just…hanging out there. She wasn’t just having a cuppa. She wasn’t just watching telly. She was in her wedding dress, and she had a gun.” 

Arthur straightened away from the fireplace. Eames caught the movement in the corner of his eye. “She what?” 

“She had a gun. Sherlock cast my wife as a _murderer_. That’s how he feels about her. He’s got her locked up in his brain with people like Moriarty. That’s how enormous a betrayal Sherlock feels like my wedding was. This is what I did to him. And I feel _terrible_.” 

“No, you don’t,” said Eames calmly, and took another sip of his tea. “I mean, yes, you obviously feel terrible, but it’s not because you broke Sherlock’s heart. It’s because you broke everybody’s heart, for no reason. If you felt like you’d done the right thing in marrying Mary, you’d feel sad for Sherlock but you’d be trying to help him move on. Your problem right now is that you’re just fully realizing the enormity of the mistake you’ve made.” 

“That’s what you think,” said John, practically quivering at Eames. 

Eames regarded him calmly, because, actually, that was what Eames _knew_. 

John said, “That’s why I want us to go into my head.”


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Eames looked coolly skeptical, because that was basically how Eames _looked_ , thought John. Eames had the same sort of maddening know-it-all condescension that Sherlock had, only more annoying.

Eames said, “What exactly do you think we’re going to find if we go in your head?” 

“I don’t know,” said John. “The _truth_ , right? Won’t we find the truth?” 

“I guess. Possibly. Theoretically. Unless you’re one of those blokes who lies to himself so very effectively that even your own head won’t let you in. What do you think, darling?” Eames glanced over at Arthur, then frowned and said, “Darling?” 

John hadn’t been paying much attention to Arthur. Now he looked over at him. Arthur was standing staring at him very hard, and John frowned. Why did they both seem to insist on acting like he was some kind of weird _specimen_? 

“What did you say to Mary?” Arthur asked. 

“What?” John had no idea what he was talking about. “When? In Sherlock’s head? Nothing, really. I mean, what was there to say? She just—”

“No. Now. Just now. When you came over here. What did you say to Mary?” 

“I… Nothing. She was sleeping. Look, what I do and do not say to my wife isn’t really any of your business—”

“You want to let us in your head, mate,” remarked Eames. “There isn’t really anything that _isn’t_ going to be our business after that.” 

John took a deep breath to calm himself down. It was _true_ , what Eames was saying. If he was going to let these people into his head, then he had to stop being defensive with them. Being defensive with them wouldn’t get him the answers he needed. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I just want you to go into my head and tell me what it means.”

Eames was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “We’re not _psychologists_ , you know. Although maybe we should be. Maybe that would be a nice easy way to make money—Arthur.” Because Arthur suddenly strode out of the room. 

“Be right back!” he called back. 

Eames looked back over at John and said, “You know, I’ve already told you what I think is inside your head. Why are you going to start believing me about it now?” 

“Because I’ll be with you,” John said. “Because I’ll see it for myself. Because…” John trailed off, feeling like he was choking on his confusion. The truth was, he didn’t know why it would make a difference, except that he felt like he kept coming up against a brick wall in his own head, and behind that brick wall was _Sherlock_ , and he couldn’t get himself to smash through it, but if he _could_ , then… And maybe he could if he was unconscious. Maybe he could if he was _sleeping_. “I dream about Sherlock,” he said suddenly. 

Eames said, “Look, you shouldn’t read too much into a sex dream. Unless, of course, you _should_. Dreaming is messy business.” 

“Not that kind of dream,” John snapped. “Other kinds of dreams.” 

“Like what?” 

“I don’t know. Stupid things. Being out on cases with him. The point is: Sherlock lives in my head. I know he does. He already shows up in my dreams. So we just need to go in and see where he is in my head.” 

“And where Mary is,” said Eames. 

“What?” said John. 

“Where Mary is. What’s really going to tell us the information is where he is in relation to Mary. Of course, there is the fact that Mary is carrying your child, which is going to skew everything now, but—”

“Okay,” said Arthur, striding back into the room carrying the silver briefcase John remembered from all his previous dreamsharing experiences. Which, it was alarming to realize, he had a decent amount of. 

“Eager, petal?” asked Eames. 

“Yes. Very eager,” said Arthur briskly, setting up the machine. 

“Arthur has a weakness for soap operas, you know,” Eames told John. 

“My life’s not a _soap opera_ ,” John protested. 

“Here you go,” Arthur said, as he inserted Eames’s IV for him. “I’m going to give you guys ten minutes, okay?” 

“Ten minutes?” Eames echoed. “I’m not sure we’re going to need— Wait, you’re not going in, too?” 

Arthur handed John his IV. “I am doing my job and watching over the dreamers.” 

Eames cocked his head and said slowly, “Arthur, why would she—”

Arthur shook his head sharply and said, “Later.” 

John looked between them. “What? What are you talking about?” 

“Your head, Dr. Watson,” said Arthur, “is, I think, going to be a very interesting place. Pleasant dreams, Mr. Eames, hmm?” He settled a hand familiarly on the back of Eames’s neck and brushed a kiss over his lips. 

Eames caught the wrist near his shoulder and said firmly, “Be bloody careful.”

“Always. I’m the careful one.” 

Eames snorted. 

John said in bewilderment, “What—”

And then Arthur pushed the button. 

***

John Watson’s head was a fucking warzone. 

“What,” Eames shouted, as he dropped immediately to sprawl on his stomach in the heat-radiating sand, getting a mouthful of it for his trouble, “the actual _fuck_?” 

“Sorry!” John shouted back from where he was sprawled flat next to him. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” 

Eames scowled and tapped John’s head. “This is _your_ sodding dream, bloody change it right bloody now.” Bullets whizzed over them and some of them hit the sand with dull, solid thuds that Eames felt were too close for comfort. “Being shot in a dream isn’t _fun_ , you know,” he told John. 

“I don’t know how to change it,” John snapped back. The air beat unpleasantly with the sound of a helicopter overhead, and Eames had the feeling it wasn’t friendly. 

“You’re panicking,” Eames told him, and grabbed his wrist to try to ground him, moving closer so he could speak into his ear. “Listen to me: You’re panicking. Take a deep breath. This isn’t your head. This isn’t your life. Close your eyes and _breathe_ , John. Breathe. What do you see?” The helicopter stopped rattling over their heads, the bullets started to thin out. Eames exhaled in relief. “That’s it,” he said. “Keep thinking of whatever you’re thinking.” The sand underneath them was cooling, and then thinning, running away from them in rivulets, and suddenly, just like that, it disappeared entirely and they landed hard on the floor of Baker Street. 

Eames took a deep breath to get the adrenaline the gunfire had set off under control. A person’s body was really terrible at knowing when it was in a dream or when it was in real life. Eames could see how easily you could slip into never knowing the difference, because it was really only a tenuous memory in your own head protecting that for you. And a totem. Eames reached into his pocket and closed his hand around his and took another deep breath and then stood up. “Okay,” he said. “Well done.” 

John looked at him from where he was sprawled on his back on the floor. “‘Well done’? You think that was ‘well done’?”

“We’re still alive, aren’t we? I set my bar for achievement very low. Okay. Let’s take a look around.” Eames actually really loved this part, under normal circumstances. The first time in someone’s head, in a new dreamscape, was _amazing_. There was so much to _explore_ , so much to poke around through. Eames wasn’t an architect and wasn’t really as good at creating landscape in a dream as Arthur was, but Eames was much more of a natural explorer than Arthur. Arthur always walked through dreams looking for the escape routes, for the redundancies, for the weaknesses in the defense. Eames was the one who had to say things like, _Darling, look at this thoroughly incredible pink-and-chartreuse-striped hedgerow._

So Eames tried not to bounce with too much enthusiasm as he walked over to the window, because he didn’t want John to think he was enjoying himself too much. He thought somehow that John might be one of those spoilsports who got offended if a stranger had too much fun in his head. 

There was a pretty spot-on replica of London out the window. The only thing unusual about it was that it was completely devoid of people. 

“Where is everyone?” John asked. He had picked himself up and was now looking out the other window. 

“This is your brain,” Eames reminded him. 

“Right, but what does it mean if it’s deserted? You’re the dreamsharing expert.” 

Eames considered. “Well, normally, if you were a mark, I’d say it’s because you’ve got all your projections off protecting some other location, and we’re not threats yet so they’re not focusing on us. Or you just really hate people. Or you have a really uncreative brain.” 

John gave him a baleful look. 

Eames wanted to say, _I can’t help it, you are so incredibly easy to antagonize_. If Arthur were there, he would definitely have told John all about Eames’s inability to keep from antagonizing people. But instead, Arthur was up above dealing with John’s mad wife, who Arthur clearly thought had shot Sherlock, because Arthur clearly thought Mary was absolutely batshit. 

And, remembering that Arthur had consciously put himself, as usual, in the more dangerous position, Eames got down to business. If John’s wife really was as lethally unhinged as Arthur’s theory would imply, then Eames thought it would be helpful to see if John’s subconscious sensed something was off. Maybe John subconsciously had useful information hidden in here. It was time to investigate. 

Except that when Eames walked over to the kitchen, he couldn’t get in. When he went to walk into it, he was pushed back with a little spark. 

“What was that?” John asked from the window, where he was still standing. 

Eames rubbed his stinging fingers. “You’ve got some sort of electrical field up around this kitchen.” 

John walked over to stand by the kitchen doorway with Eames. “Because it’s important to me?” 

“Or because you’re just very private and you don’t want me exploring. You go in.” Eames nodded toward the doorway. 

John looked at him uncertainly. 

“You won’t sting yourself,” Eames assured him. 

“You have a lot more confidence in my brain than I do,” said John grimly. 

“Actually, that much is obvious,” said Eames. “You don’t even have enough confidence in your brain to fully populate it. And you’re so secretive that you’re making sure to keep even yourself far away from wherever you’re keeping everything.” 

John looked displeased at Eames’s assessment, although he didn’t argue it, probably because Eames was so obviously right. 

What he did do was set his shoulders back and walk through the kitchen doorway. Then he looked back at Eames from within. “What am I supposed to be doing in here?” 

“Nothing,” said Eames. “Just wanted to make sure your brain wasn’t shutting you out, too.” 

“I thought you said my brain wouldn’t!” John protested. 

“John,” Eames sighed. “I am an actual, literal _conman_. You need to not trust a single word I say. Except for how you should definitely trust everything I say because I’m your only chance in here.” 

“I hate you,” John said. 

“I am impervious to such proclamations. Ask Arthur.” 

“And I hate dreamsharing.” 

“You have the wrong attitude for dreamsharing. You need to be willing to know more about yourself than you are.”

“And it’s my own bloody head,” John grumbled. “I don’t need protection from it.” 

“Yeah,” said Eames, as sirens started up on the street below. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” 

***

Arthur wasted no time. He pressed the button on the PASIV and John and Eames fell asleep and then he went into action. First, he called Mycroft. Then, as he waited for the call to be answered, he maneuvered his dreamers into a more defensible position. 

Mycroft answered with, “Now that it’s the middle of the night, you wish to be more forthcoming about your dreamsharing excursion into my brother’s head?” 

“Do you know where Mary is?” 

“At home. Sleeping.” 

“How sure are you of that?” 

Mycroft’s voice was sharp. “Why do you ask?” 

“Because John Watson is here at Baker Street. Did you know that?” 

There was telling silence on the other end of the phone. 

“Look,” said Arthur, satisfied with the positioning of his dreamers and walking out of the lounge and up the stairs to John’s bedroom. “I don’t have time to deal with the breakdown of your spying system. Mary is the one who shot Sherlock.” 

“Mary?” Mycroft sounded incredulous. “Why would she do that? How do you know that?” 

“I know it because I’m good at what I do,” Arthur snapped. “You find out where she is, and you’d better hope where she is isn’t Sherlock’s hospital room finishing off the job.” Arthur hung up his phone and then whistled for Tate. 

Tate came bounding up the stairs to him. 

“Okay,” Arthur said, gesturing him into the bedroom. 

Tate leaped onto the bed and wagged his tail furiously and enthusiastically licked the hand Arthur held out to pet him. 

“You need to stay up here and be really quiet. Remember we learned that?” They weren’t terribly good at teaching Tate tricks, but that was one they’d insisted on. “So. Be good and I’ll be up to get you soon.” He dropped a kiss between Tate’s ears, took a step back, and thrust his hand in a downward motion while saying firmly, “Stay.” Then he lifted a finger toward his lips and said firmly, “Quiet.” 

Tate lay down on the bed, tail still wagging. 

Arthur nodded at him and then walked out of the room and closed the door. And then he shut off the lights and sat on the staircase with his gun in his lap. Because there were two places Mary was going to go. One was to the hospital, and Arthur couldn’t do anything about that other than warn Mycroft. The other was here. 

***

“Sirens aren’t any reason for alarm,” John said. “We _like_ sirens in this house.” 

John turned out to be right. Eames stood and watched the police car pass down the otherwise deserted street. Then Eames frowned and turned back to John. “Okay, everything is somewhere else. You need to think. Where would you be keeping everything of value?” 

“Well, my house,” John said. “I mean, I don’t live _here_ anymore.” 

Eames doubted pretty strongly that John was keeping anything at his house, but he thought it would be a nice way to prove to John just how little he cared about his present life, how much everything inside of him revolved around his former life. And they hadn’t been in the dream very long, so Eames thought they had a little time to take a detour. Arthur was prepared topside, after all, and there was no way Arthur wasn’t better than Mary, because Arthur was better than everyone, so Eames could be ten seconds later to his side, he thought. 

They walked out of Baker Street together and crossed the street in the direction of the Tube station, except that John’s house was right there. 

“Why’s it so close?” John asked, confused, as they regarded it. 

“Because why would your brain feel the need to separate it? You need the distance in real life, but your brain has the Sherlock and Mary parts of you much more closely overlapping.” 

“It was about a better quality of life,” John said. “Where Mary and I moved. It wasn’t about getting distance from Sherlock.” 

“Sure,” Eames agreed cheerfully, and then walked up to the house and politely rang the doorbell. 

“What are you doing?” John asked.

“Don’t you want to see who lives here?” Eames replied. 

“I know who lives here,” John said, following him up the walk. “Mary and I—”

The door was opened by a pleasant older woman who smiled at Eames welcomingly. “Can I help you?” 

“Who are you?” John asked. 

“I’m Mrs. Pierce,” she said, and then clucked at him. “Don’t you know me? Silly. Did you want to see the baby?” 

“The baby?” John echoed. 

Mrs. Pierce gestured. John stepped through, but Eames found himself stung again when he tried to walk through. 

“Let me in, John,” he said. 

“I can’t,” John said absently. “I don’t know how to. Where is the baby, Mrs. Pierce?” 

“You just have to _want_ it,” Eames said. Really, amateur dreamsharers were such a pain in the arse. 

“Oh, not here,” Mrs. Pierce said. “Not here _yet_. But isn’t that the only reason to keep this house? What else would you use it for?” 

John seemed to just be staring at her. 

Eames said, “So this is where you keep the baby. Where do you keep everything _else_?” 

***

The step on the stair was almost nonexistent. If Arthur hadn’t known to be expecting it, he would have missed it entirely. Mary, he thought, was very, very good. 

Not better than him, of course. 

When she put the lights on, his gun was already trained exactly on the center of her chest. 

Her gun was aimed into the lounge. 

She tsked at him. “Didn’t want to be part of the dreamshare, Arthur?” 

“My job isn’t actually dreaming, you know,” he replied. “That’s Eames’s job. He’s the one who dreams big. I just get rid of our enemies.” 

“And I don’t know how you expect that to work in this case,” she said coolly. “We both know you won’t make a move that jeopardizes Eames.” 

“Right,” Arthur agreed. “But you’ll notice that you don’t have a clean shot at Eames. Not in any life-threatening way. Not without jeopardizing John. And you won’t jeopardize John. So you can go ahead and shoot if you want. Eames will deal with the flesh wound. I’ll deal with Eames complaining endlessly about the flesh wound.” 

Mary’s eyes flickered toward the lounge, and then back to Arthur. “So what is it you’re proposing to do?” she asked. “Are you just going to kill me? And John’s baby? How will you explain that to John?” 

“What if I shoot you right where you shot Sherlock?” Arthur suggested. “You’ve got a chance of surviving that, right? What would you say the odds are?”

Mary’s face tightened. “Apparently very good.” 

“It was a sloppy shot,” Arthur remarked. “I would have thought better of you. I’m sure _you_ thought better of you.” 

“It was a last-minute attack of conscience,” Mary said. 

“Threw your aim by a hairsbreadth.” 

“It’s not a mistake I’ll make again.” 

“No,” Arthur said. “Not a mistake I ever make.”

“Then why don’t you just shoot me?” challenged Mary. 

And Arthur had to hand it to her that she had balls. Balls to threaten him in the first place, and balls to stand there so calmly while he clearly had the upper hand on her.

“Because,” Arthur said, “if you want me to be totally honest, it isn’t really my shot to make. It’s Sherlock’s. Or John’s. So I’m afraid what you and I are doing is just killing time until the cavalry arrives.” 

Mary said, “We could make a deal.” 

Arthur almost laughed. “I’m sure you think we could.” 

“What does any of this matter to you? It’s not your affair at all. You and Eames have no idea the extent of what you’ve wandered into here. It’s so much more than just me, you know.” 

“Please tell me of the massive government conspiracy.” 

“Why do you think I shot Sherlock?” Mary asked. 

“Because you’re insane,” Arthur answered. 

“Because I couldn’t let him live and know what he knew about me. You think anyone will let any of you live?” 

“I think Eames and I are generally pretty good about keeping ourselves alive, and it isn’t usually a matter of someone’s permission. And you know why I’m here? Because I owed a favor. Because I’m loyal to the people who have proven themselves loyal to me. Because that’s how you stay alive. You don’t _betray_ people. He would have overlooked anything in the universe because John wanted you. You had to know that.” 

“He would have told John,” Mary said. “That chance couldn’t be taken.” 

“John knows anyway,” Arthur said. “So what have you accomplished here? Other than going to prison?” 

Mary looked at him. And then Mary smiled. “Do you really think Sherlock Holmes will let John Watson’s baby spend any time in a prison? Even if just within a uterus?” 

“I have frequently lamented that Eames and I can’t get pregnant, because babies _are_ such convenient get-out-of-jail-free cards.” 

“How high and mighty you are,” Mary said. “I’m going to enjoy watching all that arrogance wilt off of you.” 

Arthur said, “It’s not arrogance. You really should have researched me better.” 

And that was when Eames woke up.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Eames kept talking, and John wanted to tell him to _shut up_. He now understood why Sherlock complained about people prattling on when he was trying to think. It was _annoying_. 

“I could forge Sherlock for you,” offered Eames casually. “I mean, if you think it’d help.” 

_Shut up_ , John wanted to snap. He was standing _in his house_ , only _inside his own head_ , and his house was empty because the only thing he kept in it was his unborn baby, and what the bloody hell did that mean? And instead of being helpful, Eames was babbling on about Sherlock. 

“You could be helpful, you know,” John told him. “You could tell me what this _means_.” He flung an arm out at Mrs. Pierce, who was standing there regarding them with benign, passive interest, not at all like a normal person would behave, which made sense because _Mrs. Pierce was not even a person_. 

Eames lifted his eyebrows at him as if he thought John was being incredibly unreasonable. His eyes flickered to Mrs. Pierce and then back to John. “Okay,” he agreed equably. “Let’s talk about what this means. First of all, who is Mrs. Pierce?” 

“How am I supposed to know?” 

“It’s your brain, John,” Eames reminded him calmly. 

Damn, why did John keep _forgetting_ that? He was controlling everything. If Mrs. Pierce was here, he had put her here. “I don’t know,” John said desperately, looking at her and wishing to be struck by some kind of inspiration. “I have no idea who— Wait.” The sudden inspiration struck, almost too good to be true. He didn’t even know if he trusted it. But… 

He looked back at Eames. “I might know her from when I was a kid. At church fetes. I think. I think I remember her.” 

“Did you have a happy childhood?” asked Eames. 

“You’re not my therapist,” John informed him stiffly. 

Eames just gave him a look. “John, we’re in your head. I am the best bloody therapist you are ever going to have. Now, did you have a happy childhood?” 

“Yeah,” John said. “I mean, happy enough. Before my parents died, yeah, it was…” John shrugged. 

“Then that’s a good thing. You associate Mrs. Pierce with a time in your life when you felt happy and safe, so you installed her here in charge of your unborn child.” 

“I put her here instead of me or Mary,” John pointed out. “What’s good about that?” 

“At least you put someone here. And someone you like and trust. You could have just left your baby to the wolves.” 

John stared at him in horror. “ _What_?” he said.

Eames gave an infuriatingly casual shrug. “It happens sometimes. Nothing to be ashamed of, really. Some people aren’t meant to be parents. Better to know that going in, don’t you think?” 

John stalked over to the doorway and glared at Eames on the doorstep. “Where is my wife?” 

“The more important question,” Eames said, “is the one you’re refusing to ask: Where is Sherlock?” 

***

Sherlock was in his hospital bed. For some reason, every time he woke up to find himself in the hospital, he was vaguely surprised, and he didn’t know why he should be. He’d been shot. Therefore, he was in hospital. Why was he having such a difficult time recalling that? God knew he ached enough everywhere for it to be a sufficient reminder that he was in a hospital bed. 

It took Sherlock a moment to determine he was in his hospital bed. It took him another moment to determine he wasn’t alone. Unforgivably slow of him. He blamed the morphine and the gunshot wound and the—

“I’d imagine it was quite a shock,” said the voice silkily. 

Sherlock forced his eyes open, forced himself to focus on Magnussen by his bed. It took far more effort than he wanted to show. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, because it wouldn’t do to express surprise to see Magnussen by his hospital bed. 

Magnussen tipped his lips upward and said, “Yes, I would imagine after your best friend’s wife tries to kill you, nothing is a shock anymore.” 

“You haven’t told anyone she was the shooter,” Sherlock pointed out. 

“Neither have you,” rejoined Magnussen evenly. “I’m sure we both have our reasons. Mine has to do with the fact that I have no reason to wish her imprisoned. I would much rather leave that matter to you.” 

Sherlock regarded him and wished he felt like he had the energy to be upset. But he didn’t. He didn’t have the energy to be upset over any of this. He felt fuzzy and blessedly numb, like a very good high. The painkillers, he thought, must be of excellent quality. And it was nice to feel blessedly numb most of the time, because it meant he didn’t feel much at all over the fact that Mary had shot him. Sherlock would have preferred to just stay unconscious all the time and not have to contemplate the fact that John Watson’s wife had tried to kill him. 

But now Sherlock was wishing he could be furious, because he knew that he _was_ , it was just that it was dulled. But he hated Magnussen for leaving all of this up to him. He should have been relieved that Mary wasn’t in prison already—Mary was John’s wife, John loved Mary, Mary was having John’s baby—but really he resented the fact that the decision for her to stay out of prison was now his and his alone. 

Which, obviously, Magnussen had done to him on purpose. 

And Magnussen was watching him closely for any reaction. 

Sherlock couldn’t have had a reaction even if he’d wanted to. He just said, in a bored tone, “Thank you for coming to visit. It was very kind of you.” 

“I’m sure you’ve deduced it, correct?” said Magnussen, gaze still leveled on him. “The truth about your…” Magnussen paused, then said significantly, “ _Best friend’s_ wife.” 

Sherlock didn’t let himself glance toward the door, but really, didn’t Mycroft have bloody guards around? Normally Mycroft was so interfering. Trust Mycroft to be contrary enough to not interfere the one time Sherlock desired it. 

Sherlock said, “Assassin, clearly.” 

Magnussen looked amused. “Yes. Freelance. Quite a thrilling history, let me tell you. I _would_ tell you, too, except that our time grows short. What a coincidence, wouldn’t you say, that you and Mary should arrive on the same night to engineer my demise?” 

“Not a coincidence,” Sherlock said. “It only makes sense. She would have been waiting for a night when John was not at home.” 

“Ah, yes,” said Magnussen, still looking amused. “You’re right, of course. It only makes sense. Just as it only makes sense that your Doctor Watson would marry the most dangerous person he’d met. Oh. Excuse me. Let me be more precise. The most dangerous _woman_ he’d met.” Magnussen smiled faintly at Sherlock. 

Sherlock wished he could throw one of the nearby vases of flowers at Magnussen’s head. He merely said in clipped tones, “Exactly. Nothing about this is a coincidence. How long has she been reporting to you?” 

Magnussen laughed lightly. “To me? Not at all. She had a different master whose name might ring a bell. Moriarty? I was merely a subsequent benefactor, and one toward which she has been tremendously ungrateful, as you have witnessed. An assassin right in Sherlock Holmes’s _heart_. Moriarty was very clever. I’m not sure what use he intended to make of her. For me, however, her use has become very clear.” Magnussen leveled another heavy, meaningful look at Sherlock. 

Sherlock’s head wasn’t clear enough for riddles, which was unfortunate and reminded him why he’d come to detest the drugs by the end. He just looked back at Magnussen and hoped he looked wise and knowing instead of just unimpressively exhausted. 

Magnussen walked slowly over to him and then, horrifyingly, bent over him and rubbed his nose against his. Sherlock didn’t move, mostly because he thought he might be too feeble to push Magnussen away and he didn’t want to attempt it and look even more foolish. 

Magnussen pulled back and smiled again and said, “Get well soon, Sherlock,” and then walked out of the hospital room. 

Passing directly by Mycroft, who gave him a narrow-eyed look. 

Sherlock vaguely heard Magnussen say some sort of pleasantry to Mycroft, and Mycroft said something sharp in reply and then walked into the room. 

“What did he say to you?” Mycroft demanded. 

Sherlock shook his head a little bit. “Where’s John?” It was the only thing he could focus on at the moment: Mary was possibly dangerous and John might be with her. 

“Why didn’t you tell us Mary’s the one who shot you?” Mycroft snapped instead of answering. 

Damn it, thought Sherlock. “How do you know that?”

“Arthur and Eames are good at their jobs.” 

“No, they’re not,” Sherlock said. “Not good enough to—John,” he realized. That had to be it. He’d never have let Arthur and Eames in, but he would have let John in immediately. Which meant John had been in his head. Which meant…God only knew. 

Sherlock closed his eyes and gathered his energy and, with great effort, sat up. 

“What are you doing?” Mycroft asked, sounding alarmed. 

“I’m leaving,” Sherlock said, carefully swinging his legs around and pretending that didn’t _hurt_. How could everything about his body hurt when he’d only been shot in the chest? Stupid nerve endings. “I’m going to find John.” 

“You can’t leave this hospital—”

“Why not? Because I’m so _safe_ here? You’ve got the most dangerous man in all of Great Britain breezing in whenever he likes,” Sherlock noted acidly. “And I am not letting John hear about Mary from someone else.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mycroft. “He already knows.” 

Sherlock shook his head. “He won’t believe it until he hears it from me. We have to talk about it.”

“Talk about how his wife wants you dead?” Mycroft laughed humorlessly. “That’s going to be a delightful conversation.” 

Sherlock considered. Frankly, in comparison to standing up in front of a crowd of people and giving John away, this conversation might be a walk in the park. 

***

“I’m telling you,” Eames said, “if I forge Sherlock for you, maybe it’ll trigger some—”

“No.” John shook his head. They were standing on the street in front of his house, and John was thinking of Sherlock, everything about Sherlock, including not just Sherlock’s dream but Moriarty’s dream. Moriarty’s dream where John had had to save Sherlock, in yet another version of London. “I know exactly where Sherlock is.” And he did. Where Mary was was anybody’s guess, though. And John supposed he ought to be drawing some obvious conclusions about that. 

“Lead on, then,” said Eames cheerfully, as if being led through somebody else’s head was nothing noteworthy. 

John thought it was alarming that Eames had reached a point where he didn’t find this noteworthy. But he just took a deep breath and started walking, and St. Bart’s came into view almost immediately. Nowhere near where it would have been in actual real London, but right there in John’s dream. Right where he needed it to be. 

And it was _swarming_ with people. There were people everywhere. Ambulances rushing to and fro with doctors and nurses coming out to meet them; people sitting on benches reading newspapers; people leaned up against the building talking on mobiles; people walking along the pavement on unknown errands. And all of them, John saw, kept stealing furtive little glances over at him and Eames. _Projections_ , John thought. _Those are mine._

“Uh-oh,” murmured Eames, straightening a little next to John. 

John glanced at him, and then realized abruptly that _he_ was everyone’s focus. It wasn’t John they were looking at. It was Eames. 

“So,” remarked Eames, pulling a gun casually out of midair, “I’m not sure your head’s a very welcoming place. I mean, you dumped me into a warzone, electrocuted me when I tried to go into your kitchen, and I’m fairly sure your projections are about to start tearing me limb from limb.” 

“How do I get them to stop?” John asked. 

Eames chuckled a little, still warily watching John’s projections, who were now openly watching him back. “No offense, mate, but it takes a lot of practice, and you can barely let yourself in. You’re not going to convince them to let me in.” 

“Then what do we do?” 

Eames shrugged. “We just go for it. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been torn apart by a mob of projections.” 

“Okay,” John said, after a moment. 

“Ready?” Eames asked him. 

“Your life is very strange,” John told him. 

Eames grinned, as if he was about to have the time of his life instead of be killed. “That’s one word for it,” he said. “But here’s something I should be sure to tell you, if I don’t make it through with you: Whatever you’re keeping in that building is the most important thing in your life. So that should answer your question, the reason why we’re in here.”

John regarded St. Bart’s. Where he’d met Sherlock. Where he’d spent countless hours of his life. _With Sherlock_. Where he’d saved Sherlock once before, in a dream, just like this. He was fairly certain it was Sherlock inside that hospital. 

But then again, Mary was a nurse. A pregnant nurse. Mary _could_ be inside that hospital. 

John stood and stared at the building and wasn’t even sure who he wanted to encounter. Even in his own head, he didn’t know what he wanted. Eames lived a strange life, but Eames loved Arthur and Arthur loved him back and suddenly everything about that seemed so startlingly straightforward to John. You loved someone, and they loved you back, and in the rest of this tragically complicated world, why would you ever complicate _that_? 

“John,” said Eames, interrupting his thoughts. “If we’re going to go, we should go. Otherwise they’ll just come after me where I’m standing now, and that does us little good.” 

John nodded, and said, “Okay, let’s go. Should I go first?” 

Eames shook his head. “Me first. Stay right behind me to distract them.” 

“Distract them how?” 

“Just by being right behind me. Here we go.” And then Eames dashed off. 

John kept at his heels, watching as Eames shot a couple of approaching projections and elbowed a couple of others out of his way. It was true that John’s presence right behind him seemed to be keeping some of them off. It was as if John was radiating a magnetic field, and the projections scattered away from him. 

Eames launched himself through the door of Bart’s and kept running, because of course, John realized as he entered, there would be projections in here, too. They were everywhere, looking up in alarm at their entrance. 

Eames slowed abruptly, falling into step with John. “Where?” he asked. “Where should we be going? You lead.” 

So John led. He didn’t want them to stop to wait for the lift, so he dashed up the staircase, Eames following behind. He could hear other people spilling into the stairwell. More projections, apparently. How many could one brain make? He’d have to ask Eames. 

He barreled out of the staircase onto the floor where the lab was located where he’d first met Sherlock. It was a toss-up between that location and the morgue, but he thought the lab was more likely. 

And then he skidded to an abrupt stop. 

Eames actually collided with him, then said, “John? What—” Then Eames cut himself off as he clearly saw what had caught John’s attention. 

Mary. Mary standing outside the door to the lab where John and Sherlock had met. 

She looked at John and gave him a dazzling smile. “Hello, John.” 

John thought he should respond to her, but his brain was dizzy with the realization. _Mary_. They’d come all this way and it was _Mary_. And if this was what he really wanted—if this was the true choice of his subconscious—then why was his heart sinking with what he could only term disappointment? 

“Mary,” he managed to say. 

Eames said, “Mary, put down the gun.” 

And John saw the gun for the first time. Pointed not at John but at Eames. 

Eames had his own gun up, aimed at Mary. 

John blurted, “Don’t shoot her,” thinking of the baby, momentarily forgetting this was all fake. 

Eames’s eyes flickered to him in confusion, which turned out to be a fatal error for Eames, because Mary’s bullet caught him right in the center of his forehead and he dropped like a stone. 

“Ah,” said Mary, sounding satisfied. “A flawless shot. That’s more like it.”

“You didn’t have to shoot him,” John said dazedly. But Mary was just a projection. Just a projection protecting his head. 

“That’s what you keep thinking, isn’t it? That’s what goes on inside your brain, even when the truth of it is staring you right in the face. It’s a little pathetic, John. I mean, this is _your head_ , and you still don’t get what’s going on.” 

John breathed deeply through his nose, trying to keep himself under control. “What are you talking about, Mary?” 

Mary didn’t answer. Mary swung the door open behind her. Sherlock looked up from the microscope he was bent over inside the room, and Mary lifted her gun at him, and then looked at John. 

John stared at her. She wasn’t wearing a wedding dress, but he saw her in it just the same, in Sherlock’s brain, raising a gun. Here, in his own brain, raising a gun. And aiming it at Sherlock. And it made no sense—it didn’t make any sense—

“You’ve known all along,” Mary said. “You just never looked. Your head is such a complete mystery to you, it’s terribly convenient, you know.” 

And then Mary pulled the trigger. 

***

Eames woke up swearing and tearing at his IV. “Fucking—”

Then a lot of stuff seemed to happen all in a split second. Arthur said his name urgently, Eames looked up to see Mary, guns went off all over the place, Eames leaped to the side not quite in time to prevent the explosion of pain in his shoulder as the bullet hit. As he hit the floor hard, his very first thought was, _Seriously, who gets shot twice in the same night by the same madwoman?_

There were still gunshots going off, and Eames crawled his way over to better cover. Well, he sort of dragged himself over with his good arm while his other arm throbbed and burned and generally made Eames feel like he ought to just pull the sodding thing off. When he got himself behind the sofa, he collapsed on his back and looked up at the ceiling and wiped some sweat off his forehead with his good hand and thought that he was having a fucking terrible evening. 

He could hear Arthur barking something about someone being shot and 221B Baker Street. The police, he thought. Arthur had rung the police. Excellent. 

“Eames,” said Arthur. “ _Eames_.” He slid onto his knees next to Eames, leaning over his shoulder. 

“I’m all right,” Eames said wearily, and he was, as far as that went. He didn’t feel like he was dying, at least. Not like dying in a dream, anyway. 

“No, you’re not ‘all right,’” Arthur bit out, tearing at Eames’s shirt so he could see his shoulder. 

“Fucking Mary Morstan,” Eames said with feeling, wincing. 

“Stop bleeding,” Arthur told him. 

“That’s not how blood works, Arthur.” 

“Shut up,” Arthur snapped, prodding at his shoulder. “I think it went clean through,” he announced. 

“Smashing,” said Eames. “Barely hurts at all when a bullet passes clean through your body.” 

“It’s better than the alternative,” Arthur told him, and stopped fiddling with his shoulder to loom over Eames’s face, pushing his hair off his forehead. His fingers were cool and quick and _Arthur’s_. 

Eames smiled at him, because even with a bullet wound in his shoulder, Eames couldn’t help smiling at Arthur. “Hi.” 

Arthur’s face, a mask of worry, collapsed suddenly into fond relief, as if that moment had pushed through his panic, assured him that Eames was okay. “Hi,” he said. 

“This is very dramatic, you know, you rescuing me from a world-class assassin. Very sexy.” 

“She got away,” Arthur said. 

“You missed your shot?” 

“She shot you. I was blind from my vantage point. I couldn’t see you. I didn’t know— Yes. I missed my shot.”

“Darling, that is the best proclamation of love I could ever have hoped for from you,” Eames told him solemnly. 

“Idiot,” Arthur said, “stupid fucking idiot,” and pressed kisses all over Eames’s face.

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Hudson’s voice. “What happened? Did you shoot him?” 

Arthur pulled away from Eames and scowled. “No, _I_ didn’t shoot him. Why would I shoot him?” 

“Who was it?” asked Mrs. Hudson. “Was it an intruder?” 

“It was Mary,” gasped John Watson, apparently having just woken up. 

Mrs. Hudson said, “Mary who shot Eames?”

“Yes,” said John. “Well, I mean, in the dream she shot Eames. Who told you about that?” 

“Is this all a dream?” asked Mrs. Hudson, looking confused. 

“Jesus Christ,” sighed Arthur. 

John came into view and gaped down at Eames. “Wait, what happened to you?” 

“Your fucking psychopath of a wife shot him,” snapped Arthur, “and I am going to hunt her down and remove all of her fingers.” 

Mrs. Hudson made a scandalized little exclamation. 

Eames assured her, “It’s just that he loves me very much. This is all very romantic, if you speak Arthur.” 

“She was here?” John said, looking stunned. “She was _here_? And she shot Eames?” 

“Look,” Arthur said, “I don’t have time for your internal crisis. You’re married to an assassin. She shot Sherlock in Magnussen’s office. There. Now you know.” 

John looked at Arthur and said slowly, “I already knew.”


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Mrs. Hudson said, “Mary…what?” 

John shook his head a little, walking over to lean over Eames. 

Arthur glared at him. Arthur practically snarled at him. 

“I’m a doctor,” John reminded him wearily. “Let me see him.” 

“Oh,” said Arthur, looking almost surprised at this. Then he moved aside. 

“Hello,” Eames said. “Your wife shot me twice in less than a minute.” 

John didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that. John didn’t really feel like making small talk with Eames. John wanted to go to sleep and have all of this be a dream. Why couldn’t _this_ be a dream? 

Sirens were pulling up outside Baker Street. John said, “Mrs. Hudson, could you go and let the medic in so they can come and fetch Eames?” Then, to Eames, “You’re going to live.” 

“Excellent,” Eames said. “Arthur would have sued you for all you were worth otherwise.” 

“Why would I have _sued_ him?” sniped Arthur from behind John, where he was hovering. 

“Monetary compensation for my loss,” said Eames, wincing as John tried to shift him enough to elevate his shoulder. 

Arthur muttered something dark and unhappy behind John. 

John suppressed a sigh. He felt too exhausted to deal with this. He knew he was partly responsible for Eames’s situation, and he knew Arthur was out of his mind with worry, but John had lost all reserves of patience. John had been patient for too long, apparently, with a wife who was going around trying to kill people just because John knew them. 

Lestrade said, “John? What the hell happened here?” 

John stood, making way for the paramedics who came flurrying in. “He was shot,” John explained. 

“I can see that,” Lestrade remarked. “How?” 

“With a gun,” said Arthur. 

Lestrade fixed him with a look. “You’re a very unpleasant person.” 

“You generally meet me when my boyfriend is doing his best to get himself killed,” responded Arthur tightly, and then, to the medics, “Where are you bringing him?” 

“The hospital,” John pointed out, and then paused, fixated on the idea. _Hospital_. 

“I’m going along.” Arthur set his jaw. “I’m not letting him out of my sight. There are psychopaths around every corner in this place.” 

The paramedics didn’t look inclined to argue with him. They exited with Eames, Arthur following behind. 

Lestrade turned to John and said, “What the hell?” 

John said dazedly, “I need to go with them.” 

“What?” said Lestrade. 

“How fast can you get me to the hospital?” John asked him. 

“Fast. Why? Is something wrong with Sherlock?” 

“Yeah,” John said. “Everything. _Everything_.” 

Lestrade looked alarmed. “Okay,” he said, then glanced at Mrs. Hudson, who was watching everything nervously from the doorway. 

John said, “You have to come, too, Mrs. Hudson,” because he didn’t trust Mary at all right now. If Mary would shoot _Sherlock_ …

Then again, Mary had shot Sherlock because she’d known. She’d _known_. What John had not fully realized until he had been inside his own brain. The thing he protected above all others, it was Sherlock. Eames had been right all along. John had no label for what was going on, and that didn’t matter. That _finally_ didn’t seem to matter. 

Mrs. Hudson said, “John?” and he realized he’d been standing there staring at her. 

“We have to go find Sherlock,” he said. And he’d thought he was exhausted, he’d thought he wanted to go to sleep, he’d thought he’d wanted this to be a dream, but no, what he really wanted, above all else, was Sherlock. 

***

“What do you mean, I can’t go home?” demanded Sherlock. 

“What did I say?” asked Mycroft evenly. “They are fairly simple words. I think even you should be able to understand them.” 

Sherlock, using all of his energy, glowered at Mycroft and tried to ignore the fact that Mycroft might be right, considering that he’d only been able to progress to his hospital room doorway and he felt like collapsing. 

“You’re going to kill yourself,” Mycroft remarked. “You need to sit down and rest. You’re not recovered yet. Need I remind you that you actually _died_? You’re already on borrowed time.” 

He was on borrowed time because he had to protect John, and he was doing a dismal job of that. He clenched his jaw and continued to glower at Mycroft. 

“Anyway,” Mycroft said, glancing at his phone, “you can’t go home because everyone at Baker Street is coming here.” 

“What?” asked Sherlock. He felt slow and stupid, and he hated that. “Why would they be coming here?” 

“Because it appears Eames was shot.” 

Sherlock absorbed that. “By Mary?” 

“Possibly. Although who knows? You do make an awful lot of enemies with unusually adept access to guns. And he’s going to be fine, by the way.” 

“Who?” asked Sherlock, wondering where Mary was now, where _John_ was now. 

“Eames. Your concern is quite touching.” 

“If he were dead, you would have led with that,” Sherlock snapped, because he didn’t have time for this. “Where’s John? John’s who we need to—”

And then John was there. Right there. He stood next to Mycroft and looked at Sherlock very steadily, and Sherlock had expected him to be shattered over the revelation about Mary, but he looked very steady. Or maybe it was just that Sherlock was too stupid at the moment to deduce properly. John had been a mess when Sherlock had met him, and stupid people had apparently been easily deceived by his appearance, so John clearly could fake well-adjusted capableness when he needed to. Maybe he was faking at the moment and Sherlock was too dense to see without the aid of something obvious like a renewed psychosomatic limp. 

“Hello,” John said to him. 

“Hello,” Sherlock said back automatically, and then considered what to say next. _Your wife is a freelance assassin_ probably wasn’t appropriate. But it would be succinct. 

John looked at Mycroft. “I can take it from here.” 

“I’ve no doubt,” said Mycroft, who looked bored beyond words. “Where are your dreamsharing compatriots?” 

“Eames is getting stitches and being a horrible patient, and Arthur is humoring him,” John said. 

“Then that seems in order,” remarked Mycroft. “Stay in bed,” he said to Sherlock sternly. 

Sherlock sent him a renewed glower as he walked down the hallway. 

“He’s right, you know,” John said. “You should be in bed.” 

“John,” Sherlock began, because there were far more urgent things to discuss than _bed_. 

“I’m all right,” John said, clearly knowing what Sherlock was worried about. Well, it didn’t take a genius to determine that your assassin wife should be the topic of most conversation. “I won’t be all right if you don’t get back into bed, though.” 

Sherlock let himself be nudged back into bed. He grumbled about it, but the grumbling was mostly for show. The truth was that he was already exhausted, and there was a possibility that pushing himself much longer would have less-than-desirable consequences. And John still wasn’t safe. The whole point of not dying had been to keep John safe. 

“John,” Sherlock began, as John pulled the blanket up over him to tuck him in. “We need to talk about—”

“You’re absolutely right,” John agreed calmly. “We need to talk, but not about what you think.” 

Sherlock opened his mouth to hotly protest that he knew very well what they needed to talk about, that John needed to come up with a plan for keeping himself and the baby safe, that he couldn’t just drift along and hope things worked out, that Sherlock had allowed himself to be deceived by Mary for long enough, that Sherlock was willing to accept his error on that front—

Except that John, having tucked him into bed, lifted a hand up and cupped it around Sherlock’s cheek and all of Sherlock’s words failed him. 

John looked at him. John _looked_ at him. For a very long moment. And they usually looked at each other, it wasn’t as if they never looked at each other, they looked at each other constantly, but this didn’t seem like all the other looks. 

Sherlock swallowed and hoped he didn’t look uncertain about what was going on here. 

“I’m sorry,” John said firmly. 

“It isn’t your fault,” Sherlock said immediately. “She tricked both of us, and I should have known—”

“No,” John interrupted, in that determined tone of voice he had, shaky with the strength of his conviction. “Not about Mary. I’m not sorry about Mary. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize… Not about Mary.” 

“Is this about the inside of my head?” asked Sherlock. “Because I’m going to forgive you for going in there, but let’s not—”

“No.” John laughed, surprising Sherlock, who could only blink at him in bewilderment. “It’s about the inside of _my_ head.” 

Sherlock looked at John and…didn’t understand. Sherlock hated to admit when he didn’t understand, but he _didn’t_. Maybe John was hysterical. “I’m all right,” he assured him. “I really am all right.”

“I’m sorry I made you wait,” John said. “I’m sorry I made you… I’m sorry I didn’t know the inside of my own head.” John lifted his other hand to Sherlock’s other cheek, so that now he had Sherlock’s face framed between his hands. Sherlock exhaled a shocked, wordless whoosh. “The inside of my own _heart_ ,” said John, and smiled a small, soft smile at him. 

Sherlock stared at him. He heard himself babble, “The heart doesn’t have anything inside it. I mean, it’s just blood. The center of human emotion is—”

“Sherlock,” John said, still smiling, and then kissed him. 

***

“Right,” said Lestrade, staring at Arthur. “But you were there, weren’t you? You already said you were there?” 

Arthur didn’t take his eyes off of Eames. “I was there,” he confirmed. 

Eames said tightly, “Darling, you’re looking very thunderous and terrifying the poor nurse.” 

“He’s not very terrifying,” said the nurse working on his stitches. 

“Why is he in so much pain?” Arthur demanded. “Can’t you give him anything for the pain?” 

“I’m fine,” Eames assured him. “She is literally sewing my skin together, it’s just not going to be pleasant.” 

“But if you were there,” Lestrade interrupted them, “then you must know who shot him.” 

“Nope,” said Arthur, now peering at the nurse’s handiwork as if to judge it. “No idea.” 

Lestrade sighed and looked exasperatedly at Eames. “And you don’t know either, Mr. Eames?” 

“I think I have trauma-related amnesia. Is that a thing?” he asked his nurse. 

“If you wouldn’t mind,” the nurse snipped at Arthur, who’d leaned in too close. 

“Tell him he’s terrifying,” Eames advised. “You hurt his feelings with that.” 

The nurse and Arthur both glared at him. 

“Darling,” Eames said soothingly, “I find you extraordinarily terrifying.” 

“You’re not in enough pain, I’ve decided,” said Arthur. “You need to be in more pain.” 

“I don’t know who it is you think you’re protecting,” Lestrade began hotly. 

“That’s the point,” remarked Eames, and chanced a wink at Lestrade because it distracted him from a particularly annoying stab of pain. “ _You_ don’t know who we’re protecting.” 

“I don’t think it’s—”

“Ah,” noted Mycroft as he entered. “Look at you two. Making friends as usual, I see.” 

“Mycroft,” Lestrade said immediately. “They say—”

“Any manner of nonsense, I know all about it. Have you filed a report on this?” 

Lestrade stabbed a finger at Eames. “He was _shot_.” 

Mycroft lifted his eyebrows at Eames. “Were you indeed, Mr. Eames?” 

“Come to think of it,” mused Eames, “I think I tripped and fell, oh, _bloody hell_ , aren’t you done yet?” 

“Tripped and fell,” said Lestrade. 

“He is incredibly clumsy, is our Mr. Eames,” said Mycroft, studying his umbrella. 

“Once I walked right into a moving car,” Eames commented. “It was quite the momentous occasion in my life, let me tell you.” 

Mycroft said to Lestrade, “I think we’re through here. He’s quite well, considering he’s entirely fictional.” 

“That hurts my feelings,” said Eames. 

“He, on the other hand, has a number of outstanding warrants against him,” said Mycroft mildly, sweeping his hand toward Arthur. 

“No, I don’t,” said Arthur, looking unamused. 

Eames said, “I love that you think now’s the time to go after Arthur. He’s not in the mood.” 

“I’ve had a bad day,” said Arthur laconically. 

“We need to have a conversation,” said Mycroft, looking ill at the prospect. 

“Mycroft,” protested Lestrade. 

“Thank you, Greg,” Mycroft said loftily, nudging Lestrade bodily away. “I’ll be in touch.” 

Eames lifted an eyebrow at Mycroft. “Greg?” 

“That’s his name,” Mycroft replied. “He has two real names, unlike other people here.” 

“Ignore him,” Eames told the nurse. “He’s melodramatic.” 

“I’m getting out of here,” the nurse said, stepping back from Eames. 

“Thank Christ,” said Eames fervently. “And now you can bring me all of the morphine in this hospital, yes? If you don’t bring it, my boyfriend will just steal it for me, such is his devotion to me.” 

Arthur glared, which really made him look exactly like someone who would go steal morphine. 

The nurse rolled her eyes a little bit. 

Mycroft said to her smoothly, “Take a little while with the morphine.” 

“Ah, yes,” Eames said. “Because that tactic seems inclined to get me in a talkative mood.” 

“I don’t need you to talk,” Mycroft snapped. “I need you to listen.” 

Arthur snorted. “Good luck. He never listens.” 

“You as well,” Mycroft told him. 

“Yeah,” said Arthur, his mouth set in a firm line. “I actually really want to listen very hard. Because you are going to tell us, right now, what the fuck is up with Mary Watson and why you let this get to this point, and if you dare try to lie to us about it, I swear to God, I will stab you in the throat with that fucking umbrella.” 

“He’s had a bad day,” Eames added. 

“I’ve had a bad day,” Arthur agreed. 

Mycroft stared across at Arthur for a long moment. Eames sighed and counted the ceiling tiles. 

Eventually Mycroft said, “This is only because I need you to—”

“You’re going to tell us all about the mess you’ve made, and then we’re going to tell you how to clean it up,” Arthur clipped out at him. “Now talk.” 

***

John Watson’s mouth, up against his mouth. John Watson’s lips, up against his lips. _John Watson_ , just… _there_ , right there, kissing him, hands framing his face, body close enough to feel the heat rolling off of him. 

Sherlock wanted to kiss him forever, and then when forever ended, he wanted to pull him in and press his face into John’s neck and breathe, and then after he’d done _that_ forever, for his third forever he wanted to get John in bed and try out this sex thing again. 

John’s kiss, soft and gentle and sweet and somehow persuasive, as if he’d thought there was something he’d need to persuade Sherlock of, ended, receded. John dropped his hands to Sherlock’s shoulders, where he stroked gently in an unconscious caress as he leaned his forehead against Sherlock’s. 

“How many forevers do you think we get?” Sherlock asked. 

“What?” John asked, his voice hoarse. 

“I need three forevers, at least. Can I get three forevers?” 

John pulled back, which wasn’t what Sherlock had intended, and looked at him critically. “Are you… Have you got a fever?”

Sherlock shook his head desperately and reached to pull John back in. Indulged his second forever and tucked his face into John’s neck and breathed. 

And felt John brush a kiss across his head. Maybe he was dreaming, and if he was, he wanted to make sure he never, ever woke up. If he ran into Arthur and Eames in this dream, he was going to ask them that: How do I make sure that I never wake up? 

John said, “You need a fourth forever, because you need the forever where I find a way to make up to you how long I took with this.” 

Sherlock shook his head again. 

John kept talking, his hand stroking through Sherlock’s hair. His _hand_ in Sherlock’s _hair_. He said, “I’m so sorry. I’m _so_ sorry.” 

Sherlock lifted his head and looked at John and said severely, “Idiot.” 

John lifted his eyebrows. 

“What are you apologizing for?” 

“I almost got you killed,” John pointed out. 

“Do you think there is anything about this I would change?” Sherlock asked. “Because this got us here. I wouldn’t change anything about this. I’m glad you went into my head.” 

John shook his head. “No, don’t you see? It really wasn’t your head. It was _my_ head. It turns out, when you go into my head, you’re my most precious thing. All of my energy is poured into protecting _you_. It’s you, Sherlock. It’s always been you. And I was so…so…thick-headed in not seeing it, in insisting that I didn’t…” 

“Don’t you see?” Sherlock said. “I wouldn’t change anything about your stubbornness, either.”

John looked at him for a long moment, his gaze soft and fond. Then he said, “Right now I’m feeling like I don’t deserve you.”

“I’m an obnoxious arsehole,” Sherlock reminded him. 

John smiled at him. “Yeah, but you’re _my_ obnoxious arsehole. Which…sounds weird. Maybe forget that I said that.” 

“I’m not forgetting anything about this,” Sherlock said. “I’m going to make sure never to forget anything about this.” 

John, still smiling, finally moved away from the bed, settling in the chair beside it. And Sherlock felt a bit bereft, but it was also nice to be able to look across and see all of John without being hunched up next to him. His body still wasn’t in the shape to be hunched up. John said, “How long have you known, and why didn’t you tell me?” 

Sherlock considered. “How long have I _known_? Not long, really. I mean, I loved you from the minute I saw you, with your stupid psychosomatic limp. But when did I know it was love? I don’t think I knew until you tried to save my life at the pool, and then I knew that it was…that it was probably love, even though that wasn’t something I’ve ever thought of with regard to myself, but you…I don’t know, it’s possible I knew all along and wouldn’t let myself know. Your head isn’t the only place that’s a mess.” 

“Your head is marvelously clean and well-ordered,” John told him. “You have all of your murderers lined up in neat little rows of cells, according to Eames. Of course, then you also had all of the murderers _chase_ Eames.” 

“Did I?” said Sherlock. “He probably deserved it.” 

“And you sent Arthur an Irish setter, which is the farthest thing from that little yappy dog they have that you could get.” 

“An Irish setter?” said Sherlock, surprised by that. “Hmm.” He decided not to dwell too long on the significance of that. He said, “What did I send you?” 

“A butler,” John said, and smiled. Then he said, “Why didn’t you tell me, Sherlock? I can’t help thinking that one word from you, just one word, would have—”

“I don’t know why you think that. You never gave me any reason to think that you thought of men that way.” 

“I don’t,” said John. “I think of _you_ that way.” 

Sherlock looked across at him. Then he said, “I wish I’d…I wish I’d gone into your head. I knew, for Arthur and Eames. When you stripped everything away from them, at their heart, they wanted each other most. It was so obvious, it was so crystal clear. They were being such idiots about it when I knew it was guaranteed that it would work for them. I told Arthur to tell Eames, and he wanted to know why I would never tell you, and I was…scared. No one had looked into your head to tell me what was there. All I could go on was…” Sherlock didn’t want to say, _All I could go on was you, and you always said you weren’t gay_. He cleared his throat and said, “But then it worked out, for Arthur and Eames, like I knew that it would, and they were happy, and I thought maybe… But then you met Mary. You just…you met Mary.” 

John was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Did you know? About Mary?” 

Sherlock shook his head. “Not until the moment she was holding a gun on me. And even then I didn’t know. I thought surely— _surely_ —she wouldn’t shoot me. I stood at her wedding and vowed to protect her, promised her… I told her she was pregnant, I was the first to congratulate her. And she stood there and shot me. No, John, I didn’t know. If I’d known, I wouldn’t be here.” Sherlock couldn’t help the self-loathing that crept into his voice. 

“You can’t blame yourself,” John said. “You should blame me—”

“How were you to know?” Sherlock demanded. “You don’t know the inside of your own head, but I do. Or knew enough to know that you’re drawn to danger. You liked her so very much, I should have known immediately that you were sensing something about her that was dangerous. But I was so uncertain. Maybe, I thought, all along you’d wanted the opposite of me. Maybe all along you’d wanted the quiet life.” 

John was silent for a long time. “I don’t want the quiet life,” he said finally. 

Sherlock snorted at the understatement. “You _hate_ the quiet life. You were crawling out of your skin married to Mary. You know it’s true.” 

“That wasn’t because of the quiet life,” John said. “That was because I was married to the wrong person.” 

He said it so steadily, so evenly, and Sherlock looked across at him and tried not to think ahead, to things like marrying the _right_ person. John was just getting used to the idea of loving him. It was best not to rush all of this. 

Sherlock said eventually, “You married an assassin.” 

“Yes,” John agreed. 

“She’s going on a bit of a killing spree on your behalf, apparently,” Sherlock continued. 

“It’s a little alarming,” said John. 

Sherlock shrugged. “You inspire crazed devotion. It’s understandable.” 

John stared at him. “It isn’t understandable, Sherlock.” 

“If I had you,” Sherlock said unhesitatingly, “I’d fight for you in any way I could. I don’t blame her for that.” 

“If you had me, would you stand in front of someone you knew I loved and purposely hurt that person?” 

“No,” Sherlock said after a moment. “No. Because I wouldn’t want to hurt _you_.” 

“Then don’t say you understand her, Sherlock. Because you don’t. You’d never deliberately hurt someone important to me. I know you wouldn’t.” 

Sherlock refused to drop his gaze, met John’s eyes squarely, and said, “Which brings us to the matter of the baby.”


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

John, because John was a horrible human being, had forgotten entirely about the baby. His _baby_. 

Granted, his baby was still inside his assassin-wife’s uterus, so perhaps it was more justifiable that he’d forgotten about him-or-her, but still. _Still_. 

“The baby,” he said, and was suddenly struck by the enormity of the mess he’d made. He’d married an assassin who’d tried to kill his best friend, and that assassin was having his _baby_. He looked at Sherlock and tried to read Sherlock’s inscrutable expression. “Sherlock—” he began, although he had no idea what he intended to say. 

Luckily Sherlock saved him. For most of their relationship, John had generally seen himself in the life-saving role, but he was reminded now that Sherlock had saved him once before, saved him from boredom and loneliness and feeling like he would never get to live again, and something about how calm and crisp Sherlock was here made him feel like Sherlock could save him again. Sherlock said coolly, “You have to have the baby, of course. You wouldn’t rather the child stay with Mary.”

“Mary,” John repeated. “My wife. Who is apparently a psychopath.” 

“I’m a high-functioning sociopath,” Sherlock pointed out lightly. 

“No,” John said evenly, giving Sherlock a meaningful look. “You’re not.” 

Sherlock looked appropriately flustered, dropped his gaze to where his fingers were plucking at the bedsheet, and then cleared his throat and looked up. “Well, at any rate. There’s the baby. We should have a plan.” 

John wanted to ask what that plan might be, because he trusted Sherlock to have thought all of this through more rationally than he ever would be able to, but that was when Mrs. Hudson suddenly swooped her way into the room. 

“Oh, Sherlock!” she exclaimed. “How are you feeling? You’re looking very pale.” 

“I’m much better,” Sherlock said, with a tiny smirk in John’s direction. 

John’s eyebrows flickered upward. He should have predicted that Sherlock would be cheeky about this. Sherlock was naturally cheeky, after all. He just hadn’t anticipated that Sherlock would be comfortable enough to be cheeky so quickly. 

Mrs. Hudson tsked over him. “I don’t think their medication is good enough. You might be in need of some herbal soothers.” 

“I think the doctors here have it covered,” John inserted.

“Gunshot wounds require rather more than an herbal soother,” remarked Sherlock. 

“Mr. Eames was shot, too!” Mrs. Hudson exclaimed. “Did John tell you?”

Sherlock opened his mouth but didn’t even get a chance to respond. 

“At first I thought it might be something kinky with that boyfriend he has, because I’m not sure if I trust him, but then John said it was Mary. Mary!” 

Sherlock listened patiently, and John thought how Mrs. Hudson was really the only person John ever saw Sherlock exhibit patience with. If he was in a good mood. If he was in a bad mood, he was as apt to snap at Mrs. Hudson as at anyone else, but now he was just sitting and listening to her. 

John supposed he was in a very good mood, wondered if that was too arrogant of him, decided to let himself believe it. Even in the midst of the mess with Mary and his poor baby, he himself was incredibly happy, like a huge weight had been lifted off of him, and he hoped Sherlock was, too. 

Mrs. Hudson was still talking. “How can it be Mary, Sherlock? She’s always been so lovely, so sweet and kind. I wished her every happiness at her wedding! And then she does this!” 

“Mrs. Hudson, if I knew how to explain all of this, I wouldn’t be sitting in a hospital bed at the moment,” admitted Sherlock. 

It was such a rare show of modesty that Mrs. Hudson made a stricken noise and fluttered her hand up to her mouth and then said, “Sherlock, you are _very_ unwell, at least let me bring you some of my herbal soothers.” 

Sherlock, John realized, looking at him closely, looked tired. He’d looked tired the entire time, possibly, but John’s proclamation had perhaps momentarily revived him (and there was that arrogance again). At any rate, he now looked too exhausted to deal with Mrs. Hudson. 

Reinforced by him saying, “If you wish, Mrs. Hudson,” which John could never have imagined Sherlock agreeing to under normal circumstances. 

“Mrs. Hudson,” John said, standing, “Sherlock’s very tired and should probably sleep.”

“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Hudson said. “Of course. I’m sorry, Sherlock. Feel better, dear.” 

Sherlock nodded weakly, then said, “Mrs. Hudson.” 

Mrs. Hudson paused in the doorway and looked back at him. 

“You should trust Arthur,” Sherlock said. “I would trust Arthur with my life.” 

***

Arthur had a reputation, he knew, for not suffering fools gladly. Unless the fool was Cobb, and then it wasn’t like he’d suffered Cobb gladly, he’d just suffered him out of necessity. But Arthur was aware that he was generally considered clipped and harsh and impatient. 

And that was when he _had_ patience. 

Arthur had no more patience left. This job had been a disaster from the day they had arrived in London, and he and Eames were very good criminals who had kept each other safe for a long time now, and they weren’t going to be thwarted by some fucking trigger-happy maniac they’d never even _done_ anything to. Arthur was fine with handling the everyday risks of their lifestyle, because those he could put on the tally sheet, accepted as the drawback of whatever job they’d accepted. They had _not_ signed up for Mary Watson. Arthur did not appreciate not being able to account for all risks. And it was impossible to account for someone as off-the-handle as Mary was. 

There was also, Arthur knew, the fact that his adrenaline was still running very high and he had nothing worthwhile to do with it and his fingers were itching for a gun and for something useful to do, and instead Eames was pale with a pinched look around his mouth that Arthur _did not like_. There was a possibility that Arthur was being irrational, but given the day he’d just had he thought he wasn’t being irrational _at all_. 

Mycroft, however, looked as if he thought Arthur was being irrational. He pursed his lips and regarded him sourly for a moment, and Arthur almost wanted him to try something with him so that Arthur would finally have something to _do_. 

Eames said, “Mycroft. Mate,” earning him a look of disdain this time. “Mary’s out of control.” 

“She’s a rampaging lunatic,” Arthur corrected. 

Eames went on, “And your brother is first on her list, because now that John’s finally realized he loves him, Mary will—”

“Now that what?” Mycroft asked, looking astonished. 

“Oh,” said Eames. “We went into John’s head. It was pretty clear. So now that John’s been bashed over the head with his feelings enough, he’s surely telling Sherlock, and Mary is going to be none too pleased. And, so far, you haven’t proven yourself terribly effective at corralling Mary.” 

“Neither have you,” Mycroft noted, arching an eyebrow at Arthur. 

Arthur frowned and said, “You’re a—”

“I had a bullet go through my shoulder and I’ll be home tonight. Your brother died for a couple of minutes there. Who do you think had a more favorable encounter with Mary?” Eames inquired calmly. 

Mycroft didn’t say anything. He just glared his displeasure. Arthur supposed that was his concession.

Arthur said, “Mary said she shot Sherlock because he wasn’t going to be allowed to live anyway, knowing what he knew. Mary made all of this sound like some huge government conspiracy. And you know who supposedly runs the government of this stupid country? _You_. Right? So what’s your side deal with Mary?” 

“I don’t have a side deal with Mary,” Mycroft said stiffly. 

“She should have been dead, Mycroft,” Arthur said flatly. “She should have been dead as soon as showed up in John Watson’s life.” 

“I’ve already admitted I was lax in my supervision of the situation—”

“She’s still not dead, though,” Arthur bit out. He hadn’t had much patience on this issue to begin with, and Mycroft was quickly draining it. “She tried to kill your brother and she’s still walking around London—”

“If you think I am not well aware of the severity of this—” Mycroft began crisply. 

“You know where she is,” Eames interjected wearily. 

“What?” Arthur asked, looking down at him. He sounded extremely exhausted and he looked even worse; Arthur had seen him after days without sleep, so this was alarming. 

“He knows where she is, so just tell us, Mycroft, because I am bloody tired of having to _think_ about this.” 

Arthur looked over at Mycroft and waited. 

Mycroft, after a moment, said, “She’s with Magnussen.” 

“Magnussen,” Arthur repeated. 

“Magnussen, like where Sherlock was shot,” clarified Eames. 

“So,” said Arthur, “let me get this straight: Mary is in league with Magnussen and they are trying to kill Sherlock?”

“And me,” said Eames. 

“No one’s trying to kill you,” Arthur said, “you just got caught in the crossfire.” 

“Thank you, pet, you always know how to make me feel—ow—important.” 

Arthur frowned at him, opened his mouth to mention the desire for more morphine, but Mycroft said, seemingly oblivious to Arthur’s other concerns at the moment, “She was not in league with Magnussen, of course. She _was_ being blackmailed by Magnussen. But now Magnussen seems likely to protect her.” 

“Why would Magnussen protect her?” asked Arthur. 

“Because she’s got John Watson’s baby,” said Eames, wincing in obvious pain. “She’s got John Watson’s baby, which means she’s got John Watson, which means she’s got Sherlock Holmes, which means she’s got you.” 

There was a moment of silence. Arthur looked at Mycroft. And Arthur realized that this was all much bigger than Mycroft had ever told them. Mary was right: Magnussen only existed because Mycroft was _letting_ him exist, for some reason, and Arthur had a rule not to help clients who didn’t help themselves. Because usually that was the sort of self-sacrificial nonsense that got you killed. Eames had already dodged one bullet today; Arthur wasn’t letting him stick around to dodge more. And Eames would never agree to let Arthur stick around to dodge more, so that settled that. Arthur would find Sherlock tomorrow and apologize to him and tell him his advice about what needed to be done and then his debt was repaid and if Sherlock listened—if _Mycroft_ listened—they would be fine, and he and Eames would be home being lazy in their own bed _not getting shot at_. For now, though, he was taking Eames back to Baker Street and taking care of him and worrying about the rest of the mess Mycroft Holmes had made tomorrow. 

“Whatever he’s got on you,” Arthur said, “you need to get over it. I mean, I am taking Eames back to Paris tomorrow, and we are getting ourselves out of this incredible mess, but Mary’s a psychopath and she will not hesitate to kill all of you. At least Magnussen makes some sort of logical sense: He just wants power.” 

“And you just want me to give it to him?” Mycroft snapped. 

“I don’t care what you do,” Arthur replied. “This is your problem now. It’s not mine. I told Sherlock I would help him deal with Magnussen, because I owed him. But I can’t help him deal with Magnussen anymore because you blocked the move. You let Magnussen hold whatever blackmail he’s got over your head, you let him get involved in whatever the fuck this situation is with Mary, you caused all of this disaster, you almost got your brother killed, and I’m not letting you do the same to us. My advice to you is to get rid of Magnussen. _Get rid of him_. Get over your scruples and do it. Or else let him have control and stop whining about it. But let me tell you something: Stumbling your way through untenable situations hoping you catch a break is a bad way to live, not one I advise, and not one that usually gets a happy ending without casualties. Or at the very least betrayal. Come on, we’re leaving,” he said briskly to Eames, and tried to temper what he knew was his snappish tone by leaning carefully down to help him up. 

“I can walk,” Eames said good-naturedly, as he stood. “I was shot in the _shoulder_. Look, mate,” he said affably to Mycroft, who couldn’t look any more sour than he was already looking, “Arthur’s had a bad day. But Arthur has a point. You have to make a move on Magnussen. If you don’t make a move, your brother’s going to get caught in the crosshairs, and you know it. He’ll do something rash and reckless and provoke something. You _know_ this. Fix your problem before you let it become an even bigger one. That’s where you went wrong in the first place.” 

Arthur couldn’t tell if Mycroft believed them, or was even listening to what they were saying, as opposed to just glaring petulantly. What he could tell was that the longer he stood there, the more he became convinced that there was no good outcome from any of this. And he wasn’t letting Eames become a casualty. He _was not_. 

“Lead on, love,” Eames said jovially, obviously pretending he wasn’t exhausted. 

“ _Au revoir_ ,” Arthur told Mycroft flatly. 

***

“You should sleep,” John told him. 

As if he could _sleep_. When such astonishing things were taking place. Sherlock was exhausted, but he didn’t feel like he was ever going to sleep again. 

“So you can break into my brain?” he asked, hoping it sounded joking. 

John smiled, which was lovely. John didn’t smile enough—had never smiled enough—Sherlock should always have paid more attention to that. John smiled at crime scenes. Giggled inappropriately. That was what made John smile. 

And he had known that. He should have said that. He should have pointed it out. He shouldn’t have gone along with the wedding. 

John sat in the chair next to the bed and leaned over to brush Sherlock’s hair off his forehead. “I should have realized so much sooner. I’m so sorry, Sherlock, for being such an idiot.” 

“I should have told _you_ sooner,” Sherlock said, trying to shake his head a little bit. “I knew, I knew that I loved you. I told you, when I told Arthur to tell Eames, he effectively dared me to tell you, and I didn’t, I couldn’t. And when it turned out so well for them, I thought maybe…maybe… Except that by then you had met Mary, and I thought she was what you wanted. She _was_ what you wanted, you know.” 

“No, she wasn’t, Sherlock,” John said, his voice low and urgent. “She wasn’t. I wanted you, all along. I’m sorry I ever made you think I didn’t.” 

“You wanted danger,” Sherlock said. He felt like he was fading fast, like sleep was trying desperately to catch up with him, which wasn’t fair, because Sherlock did not want to sleep and usually he was so good at resisting all of those tedious human impulses like _sleep_. “You’ve always wanted danger. That’s why you like me.” 

“I like you for a lot more reasons than that,” said John, smiling softly at him. 

“But it’s why you stayed with me,” Sherlock pointed out. “Long ago. At the very beginning. When you were making up your mind about me. You stayed because of the danger. That’s what you were looking for when you found her.” 

John leaned forward more, even closer, his hand still petting through Sherlock’s hair, and Sherlock thought he could stay in this moment forever. If only you could stop a moment. Why hadn’t science found the way to do that yet? He said, “I stayed with you because you made me feel alive. Of course that’s what I was looking for with Mary. That’s all anyone looks for in a relationship. But she couldn’t do it. No one, anywhere, has ever made me feel as alive as you. That’s why I love you. It’s not the danger. It’s not because you’re anything like her in any way. You’re…wonderful. I know you, and you love with a selflessness that is…intimidating, almost. That is so…precious. You’re nothing like her, Sherlock. It’s why she turned out to be such a poor substitute for you.” 

Sherlock’s eyes were closing. He fought to keep them open. “You don’t have to…” he tried to say. “You don’t have to say things like—”

“They’re true. They’re _true_. I will explain to you how true they are tomorrow, after you get a good night’s rest.”

This gave Sherlock the little jolt of adrenaline he needed for his eyes to fly open. “What? No. I’m awake. How are they true?” 

John smiled very, very fondly at him. Sherlock wondered if he was ever going to stop marveling at that expression on John’s face. He probably looked very stupid in reaction to it, but he couldn’t help it. Who could help it? He should have suspected Mary immediately for her ability not to look stupid in the face of John Watson’s fond attention. 

“I was unhappy in my marriage to Mary,” John said. “You already noticed that. You said I was crawling out of my skin. I was dreaming of you. I really wanted any excuse to come and find you. I was unhappy. I was unhappy because I loved you and not Mary, all along. It’s always been true, Sherlock. I promise you. It’s always been you.” 

“You’re just…” Sherlock struggled to articulate his thoughts, because how was he expected to think straight when John was still _gazing_ at him like that? And _saying_ things like that? This was going to be problematic at crime scenes. He would have to insist John turn his back and face a wall and not speak. “You found out that she shot me, and you’re attempting to find a way to make that make sense, and so you decide that you must have secretly known all along. I’ve been doing the same thing, trying to determine what I missed and—”

“No. Sherlock. When we went into my brain, Eames and me, you are the most important thing in there. I was protecting you, against everything. I was protecting you against _Mary_. In my brain. I think maybe my subconscious always knew that you needed to be protected from her. When they told me, after I woke up, that Mary had shot you, it didn’t surprise me at all. After going into my brain, I already knew.” 

“How did they know?” asked Sherlock. “I thought you said I didn’t really let them in.” 

“There was a room in your head. Only I could get into it. It was Baker Street, and in it was Mary, and she was wearing her wedding dress, and she lifted up a gun and shot me. I told them. I think they knew from that.” 

“How?” asked Sherlock, eyes narrowed. He suddenly felt more awake. 

John shrugged. “They’re experts at reading dreams.” 

“No,” Sherlock said. “They knew. They knew beforehand that there was a reason to believe Mary would be my killer.” 

The look of obvious surprise on John’s face meant he hadn’t thought of that. John said, “How would they know?” 

And Sherlock suddenly felt exhausted again. How much didn’t he know? How much weren’t people telling him? How stupidly, unforgivably blind had he been? He closed his eyes and sighed, “I’ve been an idiot.” 

“Sherlock,” John said, “You sleep now. Everything will look better in the morning.” 

Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at John, still looking fond, and he smiled and let his eyes droop closed again. “Everything looks good now. Really. The rest of it doesn’t even matter.” And he could scarcely believe how true that was. He _had_ been an idiot, and a lot of things were a mess as a result, but John was here, looking at him fondly, his hand stroking through his hair. Things were _amazing_. Tomorrow they would have to develop a plan to deal with Mary and the baby. Tomorrow they would have to untangle the chaos Sherlock’s blind spot had caused. But tonight. 

Tonight, John leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Sherlock’s forehead. A _kiss_ to Sherlock’s _forehead_. If this was a dream, Sherlock hoped he could stay in it forever. 

***

“I am quite all right, Mrs. Hudson, I assure you,” Eames said heartily, watching Arthur stomp his way up the stairs. They had met Mrs. Hudson on their way out of the hospital, and she had accompanied them back to Baker Street, fussing over Eames and somehow managing to make everything seem like it had been Arthur’s fault. 

And it wasn’t like Arthur had been in a good mood to begin with. 

“The herbal soothers,” Mrs. Hudson said, “are really marvelous with pain.” 

“Tomorrow perhaps,” Eames promised. 

“All right, tomorrow,” Mrs. Hudson agreed. “Sleep well.”

“And you,” Eames said. He watched Mrs. Hudson disappear into her own flat, and then turned back to the main door. 

While he was contemplating it, Arthur stomped back down the stairs, dragged the piece of furniture in the entry in front of the door, and jammed it up against it. 

It would cause a sizeable commotion if anyone tried to come in, and it wouldn’t be an easy entry. Eames was satisfied. “Thank you, love,” he beamed at him. 

Arthur was apparently immune to the beaming at the moment. “Come to bed,” he said. “You look like you’re going to keel over any minute.” 

“If you think that flattery like that is going to get you into my pants,” remarked Eames, “you are sorely mistaken.” 

Arthur snorted and gave him a little shove in the direction of the stairs. “No one is getting into your pants. You’re going right to bed.” 

“It was just a little gunshot wound,” Eames said lightly. 

“Shut up before I give you a more serious gunshot wound,” Arthur replied, and proceeded to basically march Eames up the stairs with a series of pokes. 

Eames, taking pity on him, went willingly, and when they entered John’s bedroom, Tate sat up on the bed and wagged his tail. 

“Oh, hello,” Eames said to him. “How have you been, then?” 

“Come,” Arthur said to him, gesturing, and Tate immediately started bouncing all around Eames, barking enthusiastically. 

“It’s all right,” Eames said, trying to pet him when he wouldn’t stay still. “There was a great deal of excitement but it’s all sorted now.” 

“Nothing is sorted,” said Arthur, digging through their suitcase before holding out a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. “Get dressed and then into bed. Let me help you with your shirt.” 

“Darling,” Eames said sadly as Arthur clinically divested him of his shirt, “this is usually so much sexier. _Ow_.” 

Arthur frowned at the bandage on Eames’s shoulder, then said, “Do you want anything for it?”

“I turned down Mrs. Hudson’s generous offer of herbal soothers. I plan to be a stoic martyr tonight.” 

“Nothing about you is stoic,” Arthur informed him, and pulled the T-shirt over his head. 

Eames crawled his way into bed and fiddled with getting the pillows the way he wanted them while Arthur moved around the room checking that their guns were properly loaded and that there were obstacles in front of the doors and windows. Tate settled on the bed at Eames’s feet and watched Arthur as well. 

When Arthur was done, he paused at the foot of the bed and patted Tate absently and looked at Eames uncertainly and said, “You’re sure you don’t want anything?” 

“Are you coddling me?” asked Eames.

“No,” Arthur denied, and shut the light off and crawled into bed next to him. 

There was moonlight falling into the room from the window, or maybe it was the sky lightening for dawn. Eames had no concept of what time it was. At any rate, he could make out Arthur staring at him. The weight of his gaze would have given him away anyway. 

“Come here,” Eames said finally, because clearly Arthur needed to fall apart a little bit and wasn’t letting himself do it. 

Arthur leaned over carefully and placed the barest brush of a kiss over Eames’s shoulder, and then he just as carefully burrowed himself against Eames’s good side, face pressed into Eames’s neck. 

“I’m right here,” Eames murmured at him, and kissed his head. “I’m fine, darling. Have you checked your totem?” 

Arthur took a deep shuddering breath and said, “I’m scared to.” 

“Check it,” Eames said. 

Arthur took another deep breath, then sat up and glared down at Eames. “If this is a dream, you’re not fucking making me wake up, okay? I get to stay here with you.” 

“Okay,” Eames said solemnly. 

Arthur leaned across him to clatter his die against the nightstand. 

Eames said, after a second, “Reality, right?” 

Arthur nodded. Then he looked back down at Eames. “We’re getting out of here tomorrow. I’m taking you home where you’re going to be safe.” 

“And are you going to coddle me? Should I expect breakfast in bed every morning? Nothing but bangers and mash for dinner every night?” 

Arthur leaned down to press his forehead against Eames’s and took a deep breath and said, “I am going to coddle the fuck out of you.” 

Eames chuckled and pulled his good hand through Arthur’s hair and thought that he didn’t think they were going home tomorrow, that they needed to stay and help Sherlock, now that they knew Mycroft was as unreliable as ever. But that was a fight for tomorrow. For tonight, Arthur needed no fights. Arthur just needed _him_. “I love you desperately,” he promised him. “I’d never leave you. You’re here, so I’m here. I’m going to try very hard never to get shot again.” 

Arthur nodded against him, taking a deep breath. “It’s just that I love you _so much_.” 

“I know,” Eames said, thinking of John Watson’s brain. “You just want the most important person in your life safe.”


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

Arthur woke once during the night to take Tate out. Which he should have thought to do before crawling into bed with Eames, but he’d been too distracted with concern over Eames. When Tate whined to wake them, Eames mumbled something that sounded like, “’S my turn, innit?” 

Because they did usually take turns if Tate woke them during the middle of the night. And Arthur thought that Eames was right and it _was_ technically his turn. 

“Shut up,” Arthur said as he rolled out of bed. “You almost died.” Arthur didn’t wait for Eames to protest any more. He stumbled out of the room with Tate and moved the furniture out of the way of the booby-trapped door and then back into place afterward and when he got back to the bedroom Eames had managed to sprawl to take up the whole bed and was snoring steadily. 

And then Tate jumped up and took up the rest of the bed. 

Arthur sighed and nudged Tate. “Come on, you have to share him.” 

Tate consented to be shoved a little bit so that Arthur could get himself onto the bed, and then Arthur picked up Eames’s good arm, flung onto his side of the bed, and settled himself underneath it. Eames snuffled, pulled Arthur in closer, and resumed snoring. 

Arthur closed his eyes and listened to the comforting rhythm of the noise. 

And the next thing he knew he was blinking his eyes open to Eames, sitting up next to him looking at him steadily. It was bright in the room. Arthur stretched and kissed Eames’s thigh because it was the closest part of him and said, “What time is it? How late did I sleep?” Eames didn’t answer, so Arthur stopped rubbing at his eyes and looked at him. “Why are you staring at me? It’s creepy.” 

“Sometimes I just like to look at you,” Eames said. “You’re impossibly lovely. Especially with bedhead and a pillow crease on your cheek.” 

“You’re a horrible boyfriend,” Arthur told him, and pulled the cover up over his head. 

“I just paid you a compliment!” Eames protested. 

“Never tell anyone I get bedhead,” Arthur commanded from within his blanket cave. 

“Darling, I think everyone knows that you have to comb your hair. I think they even suspect you use gel.” 

“They’re not sure.” Arthur peeked one eye out from under the blanket. “I hear the rumors.” 

Eames chuckled, then said, “I didn’t almost die.” 

“What?” 

“Last night, you said I didn’t have to take Tate out because I almost died. But I didn’t almost die. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“It was a gunshot wound, Eames.” 

“It was the most frivolous gunshot wound you can get.” 

Arthur groaned and moved to pillow his head on Eames’s lap. “I hate you,” he said. 

“I promise not to read anything other than that into the fact that your head is on my lap, petal,” Eames replied. 

“I’m just saying, _of course_ you get shot and it’s _frivolous_.” Arthur shifted so he could see Eames, letting Eames reach over to pet at his messy hair. “I mean, I’m grateful, of course, I’m just saying it’s _so you_.” 

“Hmm. And you love me.” 

“I do,” said Arthur, and sighed happily and turned his head to place a haphazard kiss on Eames’s abdomen. He felt like he might be covering him in haphazard kisses for a while. “How’s your shoulder?” 

“Not bad. And I’m not just saying that to be heroic.” 

“The picture you have in your head of yourself,” Arthur said fondly, grinning up at him like the besotted idiot that, frankly, he always was but seldom let himself show. 

“We have to stay here, love,” Eames said, still brushing at Arthur’s hair. 

“I know,” Arthur said, because he did. Now that the terror of the previous day had diminished, he knew they had to stay. They had to help Sherlock. They had to see this through. 

“He’s our friend,” Eames said. “And he’s been a really good one to us, honestly. And we can’t leave this up to Mycroft—”

“Eames, you don’t need to convince me. You’re right. I, you know, whatever, panicked a little bit yesterday.” 

“Don’t be hard on yourself.” 

“Eames—”

“I know you, and you’re being hard on yourself. You’re annoyed that you panicked, but you did everything absolutely right—”

“She put a bullet in you, Eames.” 

“Because you were trying not to kill her because of the baby,” Eames pointed out. 

Arthur acknowledged that with a moment of silence. “And then after she put a bullet in you, I flailed uselessly.” 

“You avoided killing a pregnant woman, which to me says you were still thinking clearly, and then you called for an ambulance.” 

Arthur considered, looking at the T-shirt Eames was wearing because it was right there in front of his eyes. “If I asked you to go home, would you?” 

“To keep me safe? While you stay here dodging a mad assassin and some creepy master blackmailer? Darling, I’d do anything you ask, except for that. And you knew that before you asked the question. I know you want to keep the most important person in your life safe. But I’d like to keep the most important person in my life safe, too. And since we have to stay here, we have to stay here together. What is it Cobb always says? That we are better as a team, you and I? And you know how much I value the infinite wisdom that comes from Cobb.” 

Arthur snorted. Then, after a moment, he admitted, “Does it make me selfish that I’d rather have you here, really?” 

“No, it makes you sensible,” said Eames. 

Arthur chuckled. “Mycroft reminds me of Cobb, you know.” 

“Doesn’t squint as much.” 

Arthur laughed again. “No, but…I think he’s good at what he does, and reliable, and decent, and he’s been hit at the place he can hurt the most, the way Cobb was with his kids, the way I was with you last night. When that happens, something inside of you flinches a little bit, and sometimes you can get that under control, and sometimes you just…spiral.” 

“All right. So, for Sherlock’s sake, we need to be Mycroft’s point, is what you’re saying.”

“Yes.”

“Which I will allow, as long as we’re not self-destructive about it.” 

“Did it never occur to you that I was more willing to be self-destructive in those days?” 

“Don’t say things like that, you break my heart,” said Eames, in that way he had that could be both light and serious at the same time. 

Arthur kissed his abdomen again. 

Eames said, taking a deep breath, “Okay. The pressure point is Sherlock. For Mycroft. That’s what Magnussen is holding over Mycroft’s head. The fear of something happening to Sherlock. 

“Right,” Arthur agreed, musing up at the ceiling, as Tate finally got impatient and came over to nose at his chest. Arthur scratched behind his ears and said, “When you’re worried about losing something precious, you react by clutching it close. And while you’re busy being irrational, the threat comes from a different direction entirely.” 

“Which is how Mary got so close.” 

“What must Mycroft’s brain be like?” remarked Arthur. “I’d love to get in there.” 

“A challenge for another time, perhaps,” suggested Eames.

“I don’t know. I know it’s your homeland and all that, but I’m kind of over England.” 

“I can’t actually argue with you there, pet. Careful of the shoulder, Tate.” 

“Careful of my _face_ ,” said Arthur, because Tate was stepping all over him in his quest to lick Eames’s nose. 

“He wants to go out,” Eames said, laughing gleefully as Tate leaped more energetically. 

Arthur sighed as he rolled himself out of bed. “You just encourage him.” 

“I do,” Eames agreed. “I’m a terrible influence.”

Arthur scrubbed a hand over his face and considered his wardrobe and thought how he desperately needed a shower and a shave. After he took Tate out, he supposed. He glanced back at the bed, where Eames was now rubbing at Tate’s belly. 

And he said, curious, “What was it like in John Watson’s head?” 

“The only spark of life was where Sherlock was,” Eames replied. 

***

John woke from the best sleep he had had in ages. 

It was noteworthy that he’d had the best sleep in ages sitting up in a chair in a hospital room. 

Christ, his life had been a mess, hadn’t it?

He rubbed at the crick in his neck, trying to work it out, and Sherlock said, “Oh, good, you’re awake.” 

His voice sounded a little rougher around the edges than usual, but much clearer and sharper than it had sounded yesterday. Closer to a Sherlockian level of non-sulk energy. 

John blinked his eyes open to…an empty bed. He sat up straighter, alarmed. 

Sherlock said, “Come on, don’t be slow, keep up.” 

John realized Sherlock was standing up. Sherlock was…dressed. 

“You’re…you’re out of bed.” 

“John. Really. Just because we’re in a relationship now doesn’t mean I am going to tolerate such obvious observations.” 

“Are we…in a relationship now?” 

“Yes. In fact, I think Arthur and Eames would say we’ve been in a relationship for a while now. And, speaking of, we have to go speak with them. Hurry up.” 

John shook his head, feeling dazed. Sherlock had already leaped to _relationship_. Sherlock had already leaped out of _bed_. Sherlock was, well, Sherlock was usually right, it was true, so maybe it was time to trust him a little bit more. “We’re in a relationship,” he said, trying it out. Yes. It seemed right. He should have reached this conclusion ages ago. 

Sherlock said, “Yes. I’ve already said that. Let’s go.” 

“You’re exactly the same,” John remarked. 

Sherlock lifted his eyebrows at him. “Same as what? Did you expect me to somehow radically be different?” 

“After exchanging heartfelt confidences and entering into a relationship? Yes. I thought maybe you’d be a little different.” John certainly _felt_ as if things should be different. 

Sherlock leaned over his chair, looking exasperated with him. A familiar look. “John,” he said, “that’s what you’re not understanding: Nothing is different. Everything is exactly the same. We are who we always were. Who we always should have been. All along. Nothing’s changed.” 

Sherlock looked calm and impatient at the same time: calm about what he was saying; impatient to be on his way. And John stared at him and realized…yes. Yes. He was absolutely right. This, John thought, was what Eames had been trying to get at, so long ago, when they had sat in the pub together and Eames had said he was wasting his time with labels. John had been in a relationship with Sherlock all along. And calling it a “relationship” instead of a “friendship” changed absolutely nothing: they were still Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. 

Except possibly they were going to have sex with each other now. 

Oh, God. John blinked at Sherlock and let himself think about it. Cautiously. Sex with Sherlock. That whip-strong, wiry body shed of all of its posh clothes, control unleashed and abandoned, flushed with pleasure and begging for more. 

Yes, John decided sex with Sherlock was a good idea, yes, a very good idea. If he didn’t get himself caught up on the _parts_ involved, he had to admit he’d wanted to get Sherlock in a position where he could give him pleasure; where those every-colored eyes would haze over, unfocused; where he could make Sherlock feel as extraordinary as Sherlock had always made him feel. 

“What are you doing?” Sherlock demanded. While John had been busy imagining him undressed and in bed and underneath him, Sherlock had moved to the door and was looking back at him. And then Sherlock said, “John?” with a trace of uncertainty in his tone. 

And John realized abruptly what this looked like to Sherlock: It looked to Sherlock like this was John changing his mind, having second thoughts, getting cold feet. Sherlock had waited so long for John to stop being scared, and it made perfect sense that Sherlock would now assume John was getting scared again. 

John shook his head and said, “No.” 

Sherlock looked even more alarmed, and then tried to scramble to cover it, and John realized he was making a right mess of this. 

So John did the only thing he thought was sure not to be misinterpreted. He stood and crossed the room swiftly and crowded Sherlock up against the door and kissed him. 

Sherlock, for a moment, still seemed uncertain, or possibly stunned, but then Sherlock kissed back, hard, reaching for John. The kiss was a clash of lips and tongues and teeth, tipping far past any of the chaste kisses they had exchanged the night before. The kiss made John feel almost the way he had on battlefields: somewhat reckless, slightly frenzied, unbearably _alive_. 

Sherlock winced and scrabbled a little at John’s chest, as if trying to push him away, and John came back to himself with a crash of sudden consciousness. 

His hands were on Sherlock’s hips, and he had pressed into him, forgetting entirely about the fact that Sherlock’s chest was a mass of bruises. 

Well, he thought, erection throbbing urgently. Sex was definitely not going to be a problem. 

“Don’t stop,” Sherlock gasped. “I didn’t mean for you to stop, I just—”

“Sorry,” John said. “I’m sorry.” He leaned in very carefully and kissed Sherlock again, this time very gently, refusing to let Sherlock force it deeper. “Later,” he promised, pulling away. “I don’t want to hurt you, and this is hardly the place.” 

“Or the time,” Sherlock said, still breathing heavily. It was gratifying to John that Sherlock was gasping for breath. He tried not to puff up with arrogant pride. 

So instead he tried to get their day back to business. “Right. The time. You said we needed to go somewhere.” 

“Yes.” Sherlock shook his head a little bit, as if getting his thoughts in order, and stepped away from John. 

John couldn’t help it. He grinned with pleased possessiveness. He probably looked like an idiot, but he really didn’t _care_. 

Sherlock flipped his coat collar up in that way he had and said, “We have to get to Baker Street. We have to talk to Arthur and Eames. And we have to determine our next steps.” 

Next steps. Right. To deal with Mary and his _baby_. Christ, how had he complicated everything this much? And Sherlock was just…forgiving him. Sherlock was so lovely, had been so patient.

John didn’t know how to say everything he was feeling about what Sherlock had been to him, all along, with such little appreciation from John. So instead he said, “Imagine if you’d wanted to just lay in bed all day writing sonnets.” 

Sherlock snorted, a smile playing around his kiss-swollen lips. 

***

They could not get through the door at Baker Street because it was blocked by something. 

Sherlock didn’t have the strength to push past it—for a moment, he was alarmed that he didn’t have the strength to even open a simple door—so John nudged him away to try shoving against it. 

And then, abruptly, the impediment was removed such that John almost fell through the easily swinging door. 

Arthur stood in the entry looking at them with raised eyebrows. 

“What are you doing?” Sherlock snapped, already in a foul mood. John thought he was doing too much too soon, and, even though Sherlock had insisted that he had to be home, that he could not stay in that hospital room another second, he was starting to see John’s point, which put him in a terrible mood. 

“Blockading the door from crazy assassins,” Arthur said. “People keep getting shot.” 

Sherlock supposed he had a point, so he said nothing and just concentrated on getting himself up the stairs. 

“Speaking of,” continued Arthur, “should you be out of bed?” 

“We need to develop a plan to deal with Mary,” Sherlock said brusquely, hoping he didn’t sound too out of breath. 

“He won’t listen to reason,” John said. “I told him he should stay in bed. He agreed to rest once we got here. How’s Eames?” 

“Hale and hearty,” answered Eames from the top of the stairs, where he reached out and helped Sherlock the rest of the way. 

“I’m fine,” said Sherlock, even though he was sweating. Being shot was _annoying_. 

“‘Course you are,” Eames agreed. “Maybe you should have a seat and I should make us tea.” 

“Fine,” said Sherlock, with an attempt at airiness. “But only because I prefer that.” 

“Absolutely.” Eames sounded amused, and Sherlock decided to ignore him, simply as a matter of conserving energy. “Hot chocolate, darling?” 

“I’m good,” Arthur replied. 

“Tea, John?” 

“I’ll help you,” John offered. 

Sherlock did not exactly collapse on the sofa, but his descent to the sofa wasn’t the most controlled. 

Arthur said, “I’m glad you didn’t die.” 

Sherlock chuckled. “Kind of you to say. Not many people would agree with that statement.” 

“People in the kitchen right now, I think,” remarked Arthur knowingly. 

Sherlock wasn’t sure if he was blushing or not, so, to cover himself, he put his arm over his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Uh-huh.” Arthur sounded not the least bit convinced. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but once things calm down, you two should go away.” 

Sherlock removed his arm, sober again. “I can’t think of anything beyond fixing the current issue.” 

“‘Current issue’ is a lovely euphemism for ‘your boyfriend married a lunatic who’s pregnant now with his baby.’”

Sherlock said, “Why didn’t you shoot her? She was here, wasn’t she? You let her shoot Eames.” 

“Yeah.” Arthur’s eyes were flat and displeased. “I’m an idiot. And also: she’s _pregnant_. With a baby that I think is fairly important to you.” 

“So how do we get rid of her and keep the baby? That’s the question,” said Sherlock. 

“I wish it could be as straightforward as calling the police,” said Eames, walking in with a cup of tea. He sat on the desk, next to where Arthur had taken the chair. Their little dog leaped off of Sherlock’s chair, where he’d been regarding Sherlock curiously, and curled up at Arthur’s feet. 

“Why isn’t it?” asked John, entering with a cup of tea that he placed by Sherlock. Instead of going to his armchair, as Sherlock had expected, he stayed hovering by him. “I mean, not that I’m anxious for my wife to go to prison, but she has shot rather a lot of people. Is she missing?” 

“She’d never abandon you,” said Sherlock. “She’s obsessed with you. She’s never going to go anywhere without you.” 

“Well,” remarked John. “Nothing about that sounds the least bit threatening or alarming.” 

“Relax,” Sherlock told him. “We’re not going to let her take you. She’s with Magnussen, I assume?” 

“Magnussen?” said John. “Why?” 

“Protection, of course. I’m sure Mary is now his most valuable asset.” 

“We can probably take out Mary,” said Eames, “but it isn’t going to eliminate the bigger issue here, which is that Magnussen wants whatever he can get on you. It’s Magnussen we need to eliminate. Without Magnussen’s protection, Mary would already be gone. It’s Magnussen that’s causing your brother to stay his hand.” 

The door to the street opened downstairs. Eames and Arthur both had guns in their hands immediately, but Sherlock knew the step on the stairs. 

He said, “Speaking of my brother.”


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

“Why, look,” remarked Mycroft, as he entered the lounge. “Isn’t this all very cozy?”

Tate picked himself up from where he’d been guarding Arthur—Tate always guarded Arthur; Arthur was Tate’s favorite; it was why Eames had to resort to bribing Tate with people-food treats—and commenced to growling and yapping at Mycroft.

Mycroft looked at the dog disdainfully and then at Arthur. “Takes after you,” he remarked drily. 

Arthur lifted his eyebrows. 

Eames said, “And isn’t it delightful? Shush, Tate, we’re going to allow him to stay for a bit.” 

“Does he bite on command?” asked Sherlock interestedly. 

“We’re working on it,” Arthur replied mildly. 

Eames filed that comment away in his brain in the ongoing file of Reasons to Kiss Arthur. 

Mrs. Hudson said, “Yoo-hoo!” as she poked her head into the room. “My, look, it’s a party—Sherlock! You’re home!”

“I’m home,” Sherlock agreed. 

“He shouldn’t be,” said Mycroft. “He should be in hospital still. Recovering.” 

“I was tired of the hospital,” Sherlock said. “It was dull there.” 

John cleared his throat. 

Eames looked between them and smiled. 

Arthur said blandly, “The assassins darting in and out all over the place didn’t make it exciting?” 

Mycroft said sternly, “That’s enough.” 

Arthur ignored him in favor of planting an extravagant kiss on the top of Tate’s head. 

Sherlock looked at Arthur like he walked on fucking water. Eames was familiar with that feeling, of course. He should take Sherlock for a drink so they could discuss the wonders of Arthur. 

Mrs. Hudson said, “I heard the poor thing barking, is he quite all right?” She walked over and cooed in Tate’s direction. 

“He doesn’t like Mycroft,” Sherlock explained, as Tate wagged his tail at Mrs. Hudson in delighted greeting and wriggled about with joy. “Who can blame him?” 

“And how are you feeling?” Mrs. Hudson asked Eames. 

“I am in tip-top shape,” Eames assured her. 

“Aside from the healing bullet wound in your shoulder,” Arthur reminded him. 

“Arthur doesn’t think I’m in tip-top shape,” Eames informed her. 

“That’s just because he loves you,” said Mrs. Hudson. 

Arthur blinked at her in astonishment. Eames lifted an eyebrow at her. 

“There, there,” Mrs. Hudson said, patting Arthur on the shoulder like that was something people _did_ to Arthur. “He’s well on the road to recovery. And how are you feeling this morning?” 

Arthur gaped at her. “I’m…fine,” he managed finally, dazedly. 

“Good.” Looking satisfied, she stepped back and said, “Can I bring up any biscuits?” 

Mycroft, sounding long-suffering, began, “Mrs. Hudson, we are trying to conduct important business—”

“Yes, biscuits,” said John loudly. “Lots and lots of biscuits, ta, Mrs. Hudson.” 

Mrs. Hudson scurried away. 

Arthur said in amazement, “What’s gotten into _her_?” 

“Herbal soothers particularly good this morning?” Eames suggested. 

“Oh, I vouched for you,” said Sherlock airily. 

“You what?” said Mycroft. 

“I couldn’t have her continue to mistrust Arthur when Arthur was the only one here trying to keep her alive,” Sherlock explained, in his _this-is-obvious_ tone of voice. 

“I was here!” Eames protested, affronted. 

“Yes, but you’re easily distracted,” said Sherlock with a small shrug followed by a wince of pain. 

Served him right, thought Eames, annoyed, and looked to Arthur to rise to his defense. 

Arthur cocked an eyebrow as if to say, _What can I say? He has a point_. 

Eames scowled at him and added this to his ongoing file of Reasons Not to Give Arthur a Blowjob Later. (It was an admittedly very small file.)

The door downstairs opened and closed again. Eames lifted his gun, as did Arthur. 

Mycroft rolled his eyes and said, “Do you really think that’s _necessary_? This place is being watched.” 

“Then it’s, like, triply necessary,” replied Arthur grimly. 

The person who walked through the door was the police inspector who always seemed to be just on their periphery. 

“Lestrade,” Sherlock said. 

Lestrade looked at the guns being pointed at him and sighed heavily. “Guys, are those legal?” 

Both Arthur and Eames put their guns away. 

“Is what legal?” asked Eames easily. 

Lestrade shook his head. 

Sherlock said bluntly, “Why are _you_ here?” 

“Sherlock,” said John, in a well-worn _please-be-polite_ tone of voice. 

“Well, it’s true,” Sherlock responded, indignant. “No one invit—” Sherlock cut himself off and looked at his brother, who was studying his umbrella closely. “ _You_ invited him.” 

Eames looked between Mycroft and Lestrade and smiled. This was better than any of those Korean soap operas he kept getting hooked on. 

Mycroft said, “Don’t you think it’s preferable that we have law enforcement involved?”

“No, I don’t think it’s _preferable_ ,” Sherlock said. “In fact, I think we _shouldn’t_ have law enforcement involved.” 

“I thought you didn’t want him involved,” Arthur pointed out. “I thought you were trying to keep secret the enormous fucking mess you’ve made of your government.” 

Mycroft fixed him with a hard look. “I haven’t made a mess of our government.” 

Arthur looked dubious. 

“Anyway,” Lestrade said loyally, “that’s a rich assertion coming from an American.” 

“I live in France,” Arthur said. 

Lestrade barked laughter. “Where you think they do things _better_?” 

Arthur looked scandalously offended because Arthur’s Francophilia blinded him to any French downsides. He looked at Eames for backup. 

Eames said, “He has a point, love.” 

“You’re just saying that because you’re British and prejudiced,” Arthur told him, because this was a recurring quarrel. Eames had come to love Paris, but he suspected what he mostly loved was _their life_ in Paris. He was never going to be head-over-heels for the city itself in the way that Arthur was. 

“Can we,” John inserted, his voice low and exaggeratedly calm, “perhaps focus on the issue at hand?”

“Oh,” said Eames, “you mean your pregnant assassin wife who keeps trying to kill all of us?” 

John fixed him with a look. So did Sherlock. 

“Yes,” said John shortly. 

“Yes, by all means, let’s talk about that,” said Eames. 

“I thought you two were going back to Paris and leaving me to pick up this mess on my own,” remarked Mycroft. 

“We changed our minds,” said Arthur. 

Mycroft looked as if he suspected their motives. “Did you now?” 

“Yes,” said Arthur tightly. “Because we’re here for Sherlock, and Sherlock’s extremely exposed to danger at the moment, most of it of your causing, so forgive us for having decided that leaving him with no protection but you didn’t seem fair to him.” 

Mycroft narrowed his eyes at them. 

Eames thought they were never going to be able to come back to this country. 

John said, “I’m here, too.” 

“And you’re compromised,” Arthur said flatly. “It’s your pregnant wife running around doing all of this. Look, is it my preference to be in this fucking rainy country where it’s so hard to find a proper patisserie? No. It’s not. I want to go home. And I want Eames to be, frankly, a thousand miles away from here. But instead we’re here and what we’re going to do is stop fucking around and fix this issue so that we can all go back to our regular lives.” 

“This is unfortunately pretty close to their regular lives,” remarked Lestrade, gesturing to John and Sherlock. 

“Look,” Eames said, pressing his leg up against Arthur’s. It was an obvious display of affection and Eames knew Arthur wasn’t overly fond of them in public, but he wanted to encourage him to back off of the rest a bit and the best way to do that was to re-focus him on Eames. Eames was an expert at this technique. “Mycroft. We don’t mean to be harsh about this. If anyone understands the danger you’re exposed to when you’re in a position of power and have people around who you love to distraction, it’s me and Arthur. Sometimes you can’t keep the most important people in your life safe all on your own. Sometimes it’s better with two. And sometimes it’s bloody best with five. So let’s do this.” 

There was a moment of silence. 

Lestrade said, “Six.” 

Everyone blinked at him questioningly. 

“Sometimes it’s bloody best with six,” Lestrade said, looking very meaningfully at Mycroft. 

Sherlock said, “I’m going to be sick.” 

***

Mrs. Hudson arrived with a platter of biscuits, which they demolished while Mycroft looked displeased and stood off to the side, refusing to partake no matter how much Sherlock wheedled at him. 

John sat and thought it seemed ridiculous to be doing something as mundane as eating biscuits, but at the same time he couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d eaten a decent meal. He felt almost like it could have been at that disastrous dinner at Angelo’s with Arthur and Eames. 

Mrs. Hudson said to Arthur, “I am sorry that I’ve been harsh on you. Even last night. It’s very worrying, you know, to have our Mary turn out to be an assassin. Took me a little bit of time to get used to it.” 

“Used to it now, are you?” asked Eames, sounding curious. 

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Hudson airily. “You just never know who around you is going to turn out to be an assassin. Best to be prepared for it to be anyone. Enjoy the biscuits!” She waved as she went down the stairs. 

John looked at Arthur and Eames, both of whom had their eyebrows raised after her. 

“Never underestimate Mrs. Hudson,” John told them. “Her husband used to run a cartel.” 

“We should get her into dreamsharing,” Eames said to Arthur. “We could use her. Sweet little old lady to lure people in.”

“If you poach Mrs. Hudson from me,” said Sherlock, and then didn’t finish the threat, probably because he was in too much pain to finish it. 

John frowned across at him and wished that Sherlock was resting instead of worrying about the Mary issue. The Mary issue, which John had caused, and that had literally almost killed Sherlock. Damn it, he had to fix this. 

“Do you think,” Mycroft inserted in that grandly long-suffering tone he had, “that we could possibly focus now?” 

“On this Mary issue,” said Lestrade, echoing John’s thoughts. “Mycroft’s filled me in.” 

“It isn’t a Mary issue,” Arthur said. “It’s a Magnussen issue. Mary’s nothing but a red herring, really. A very inconvenient, deadly, annoying red herring.”

“I still don’t understand how Magnussen’s involved,” said John. “Does Mary work for Magnussen?” 

“Far from it,” Sherlock said. “At least originally. Mary was trying to kill Magnussen the night she tried to kill me instead.”

“And now Magnussen’s protecting her?” asked John. 

“Here’s how Magnussen’s involved,” said Eames. He shifted himself off the desk to stand in front of Mycroft and held out his good hand. “May I?”

Mycroft stared at him. “May you what?” 

“Have the temporary use of your umbrella?” 

“For what?” 

“Demonstrative purposes.” 

“Humor him,” Arthur sighed. “He likes to put on a show.” 

“If I were going to put on a show, I would take my shirt off,” Eames responded. “I merely think visual aids help.”

“Give him the umbrella, Mycroft,” John said. “Christ knows you also have an unhealthy addiction to the drama of a good presentation.” 

Mycroft glared at John but handed Eames the umbrella. 

Eames took the umbrella by its handle and immediately pressed the tip of it into the center of Mycroft’s chest. 

Mycroft lifted his eyebrows and looked as if he was close to ordering Eames’s immediate demise. John knew that look well, having provoked something similar to it the very first time he’d ever met Mycroft. 

“It starts with you,” Eames said. “That’s where it starts. Magnussen is involved wherever you’re involved. You see, you and Magnussen both want the same thing: control. Over what doesn’t even really matter. ‘Everything’ is a good start, though. But it wouldn’t even be right to say that the two of you are rivals. You’re so sodding intertwined you can barely tell where one starts and the other begins. That’s what happens, when you’ve got so much mutual blackmail. It becomes impossible to deliver the final blow. I’d say you should try shagging him and getting rid of some of that unresolved sexual tension—might make for a kinder England—but I see that suggestion would be remiss.” Eames glanced over his shoulder at Lestrade. 

Mycroft frowned thunderously enough at Eames that John thought, Mycroft and Lestrade? _Really_? 

“So,” continued Eames. “There’s you. But how to blackmail you? You’ve tried to make it bloody impossible. You’ve striven to be blackmail-proof. So, any good story involving Magnussen and you has to go beyond you. You’re a non-starter. The only reason Magnussen’s still involved is because of the next link in your chain.” 

Eames turned and brought the umbrella to rest gently on Sherlock’s thicket of untamed curls. “Sherlock,” he said. “You’re the next link. Your brother has been through quite a lot to keep you safe, you know.” 

Sherlock scowled at him. 

Eames made a small humming noise. “Apparently you _don’t_ know. Or are blind to it. Which would make sense, because that’s how you’ve become such an enormous liability to him.” 

“I am not a _liability_ ,” protested Sherlock scathingly. 

“Aren’t you? How many laws do you routinely break? You’ve got a fucking detective inspector in your _pocket_.” 

“Hey,” protested Lestrade, affronted. 

“People who leap without looking only ever get into the habit because they’re used to being caught, no matter what’s on the other side. You’ve happened to have someone particularly good at being on the other side. You’ve happened to have someone willing to employ entire _cities_ into the act of catching you, if that’s necessary. You’ve happened to have the entire British government at your disposal. I don’t blame you: A bloke could get used to that. But it is of concern if you’re not acknowledging the effort it takes. It wears you thin, that constant terrified vigilance. Even the best of us inevitably make mistakes in the service of the people we love, eventually snap someday if we’re not given the opportunity to breathe.” 

Sherlock glared but didn’t say anything, which was a huge victory on Eames’s part. John was, frankly, impressed. 

Until Eames swung the umbrella at him. 

“Which brings us to you,” Eames said, and nudged the umbrella tip into his shoulder. 

“I know, I know,” said John, annoyed somewhat with Eames but more with himself. “I married an assassin.”

“Which by itself would be unremarkable. As Mrs. Hudson stands as an excellent example, people marry assassins every day.” 

“I don’t think that’s true,” John said. 

“The thing that makes this remarkable for the story I’m telling isn’t the assassin part,” continued Eames, clearly ignoring him entirely. “It’s the _you_ part. Because you’re the next link in the chain. Magnussen to Mycroft to Sherlock to _you_. Because we keep safe the most important people in our lives. Even when they break our hearts by marrying other people.” 

John set his jaw but held his tongue, because, well, he _had_ done that, and, what was worse, Eames had warned him that he was. If anybody had the right to gloat and say _I told you so_ , it was probably Eames. 

“So the next link in our chain, as you’ve already guessed, is your wife.” Eames put the umbrella down. “And that’s why she’s with Magnussen right now. Because she’s brought our chain full circle, back to the beginning. She wanted to kill Magnussen, yes. But now Magnussen is the only thing keeping her alive. Because there they are again.” Eames tipped the umbrella back in Mycroft’s direction. “Mycroft and Magnussen and their mutually assured elements of destruction, and neither one of them will make a fucking move. And Mary is the fucking prize at the moment. Mary is holding the two most powerful men in the country hostage for a king’s ransom. All because she happened to marry an otherwise unremarkable army doctor.” Eames beamed at Arthur. “Isn’t this fun, darling? Better than anything playing in the West End.” 

Arthur didn’t look amused. Arthur looked exhausted and annoyed. John understood, but John also wanted to tell him to just leave, if he was that exhausted and annoyed. John would take care of Sherlock.

Except that he’d done a terrible job taking care of Sherlock so far, which was why Arthur was here in the first place. Bloody hell. 

Mycroft said, “My umbrella,” with a threatening inflection. 

“Ah, yes.” Eames presented it with a flourish. “Thank you for its aid.” 

“You knew about Mary,” Sherlock said, sounding as exhausted as Arthur looked, as Eames made his way back over to the desk. 

“Your head wasn’t subtle about it,” said Eames. 

“No, you knew before my head,” Sherlock said. “That was the only reason you could make that leap.” 

“Eames knew right away,” Arthur said. “The first time he met her, at dinner. He told me, and I did a little digging, and once you knew what to look for, it was obvious.” 

“You knew right away,” Sherlock said. 

“I’m good with people,” said Eames. 

Sherlock said, “Yes. And you were clear-headed. I knew right away she was a liar, I just never dreamed she was—” Sherlock cut himself off. “You knew right away. Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“Because at first we assumed you knew,” Eames said. “We thought you were setting us up for something.” 

“I had a chat with Mary,” Arthur added. “She pulled a gun on me and threatened to kill my dog. My _dog_. Who threatens to kill someone’s _dog_? And then she threatened to kill Eames.” 

“You make me sound like an afterthought, petal,” remarked Eames. 

“My point is that I knew she was on a knife’s edge, ready to fly off at any time, because there was no reason for her to be as over-the-top as she was. This made it clear you didn’t know, Sherlock.”

“And there was a good reason for that,” Eames inserted. “It made absolute sense you didn’t know.” 

“It made zero sense that _Mycroft_ didn’t know,” said Arthur. “So that’s who we went to talk to.” 

There was a moment of silence as everyone regarded Mycroft. 

Then John said, “You knew. You knew I was marrying an assassin and you just…let me?” 

“I didn’t know until you were already involved with her,” Mycroft said defensively, “and then I thought it would be a non-issue.” 

“That I married an _assassin_? A non-issue?” 

“She appeared to be a retired assassin at the time,” Mycroft snapped. “And don’t think I don’t regret that decision.” 

“It’s true,” said Eames, sounding uncharacteristically sharp. “It isn’t as if Mycroft is pleased with how this has turned out. It doesn’t do us any good pointing fingers about it.” 

That made sense, but he really did wish someone had warned him before he’d married her, before he’d started all of them down this path. Why hadn’t anyone told him _anything_? How had he remained so constantly in the dark? 

“If we eliminate Magnussen, then we force Mary to deal with us,” said Sherlock slowly, as if it was costing him great effort. 

“Theoretically,” said Mycroft. 

“Then we have to eliminate all of the blackmail information he has on you,” Sherlock said. “Everything he’s been using to stay your hand.” 

“That’s easier said than done,” replied Mycroft. “Appledore is a fortress, and I’ve had men on the inside for a while now who simply cannot find where Magnussen stores all of it.” 

“Of course not,” Sherlock said wearily. “Because he stores it all in his head. You know that. _Mind palace_ , Mycroft.” 

Mycroft stilled, looking thoughtful. “But he’d have to have some proof that—”

“Not necessarily. Who thinks clearly in the face of blackmail? People panic. A bit of subterfuge here and there, and people panic.” 

“He’s right,” Eames said. “You got me to do exactly what you wanted by making stuff up wholesale about Arthur. Apply pressure the right way, and you don’t need anything practical. If you find someone’s pressure point, you only need the slightest nudge.” 

“So,” said John, “if Magnussen doesn’t have any proof, then who cares what he says he knows?” 

“Because he _does_ know it,” Mycroft said. “Because just the fact of the knowing is the danger, is what could cause the problems.” 

“But that makes everything simple,” said Sherlock on a sigh. “So simple it’s _boring_.” 

John looked across at him, looking as if everything around him was so deadly dull, and couldn’t help the stab of fondness. What would his life have been like, if _Sherlock_ had been taken from him? 

“Magnussen keeps everything in his mind, so all we have do is wipe his mind clean. And, luckily, we have mind criminals on our side.”


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

“It’s impossible,” Arthur said immediately. 

Eames gave him a look. Arthur knew that look. It was the _nothing is impossible_ look. 

“It’s impossible,” Arthur said again, slightly more firmly, in response to that look. 

“Why is it impossible?” asked John. 

“What are we talking about again here?” asked Lestrade. 

“Have Mycroft fill you in later. Pillow talk,” said Eames airily, waving his hand around. 

Sherlock winced visibly. 

“The point is,” Eames continued, ignoring the wince, “that it’s not impossible.” 

“No,” Arthur said sharply. “It’s _impossible_. It isn’t what we do. We don’t wipe minds clean. We can get information out of your head but it stays there. It just means that now it’s in multiple places: your head and our heads. It doesn’t mean that we’ve taken it out of your head.” 

“Why couldn’t it, though?” asked Eames. “We could do it.” 

“No,” Arthur said, annoyed, because this was one of his least favorite things about Eames. “You have this whole ‘Nothing is impossible with God’ thing going on which is just _not true_.” 

“I’m an atheist,” said Eames. 

“I know,” Arthur retorted. “You think nothing is impossible with God, and you think _you’re_ God.” 

Eames laughed, one of those genuine laughs that meant Arthur had startled him. “ _Touche_ , love,” he said fondly, and only Eames would look at him like he wanted to eat him with a spoon because he’d _insulted_ him. 

Arthur decided to ignore Eames. “Ignore Eames,” he told the rest of the room. “It can’t be done. We need another way to hit Magnussen.” 

“I think it can be done,” Sherlock said shrewdly. 

“Oh, do you?” drawled Arthur. “Excellent. And which of us has a worldwide reputation for being the best at dreamsharing? I wasn’t aware it was you.” 

“No offense, darling,” said Eames, with that edge to his voice that only he could add while calling someone _darling_ , “and you _do_ have a worldwide reputation for being the best at dreamsharing, but I have a worldwide reputation for achieving the impossible, and I think you thought inception was impossible before we did it.” 

“This isn’t inception,” Arthur pointed out. 

Sherlock said, “I don’t understand why you think it can’t be done. _I’ve_ seen it done, and I barely know dreamsharing at all.” 

“When have you seen it done?” asked Arthur impatiently. He didn’t understand how he had lost such control of this conversation that he was fighting multiple fronts of challenges to his authority. 

“What was Moriarty doing to people’s heads, if not wiping them clean? Wasn’t that what you were so worried about? That Moriarty would destroy Eames’s head, ruin him for you?” 

Arthur went a little cold, because _yes_ , he had been worried about that. He didn’t really want to remember the ice-cold worry of Eames throwing himself into Moriarty’s head, of Eames possibly being lost forever, the incredibly annoying and frustrating and magnificent _Eamesness_ of him. Arthur said, “That was different. That was Limbo, or something like it. Getting so lost in your own brain that you lose sight of reality, you can’t get out. That’s not wiping out memories.” 

“Nevertheless,” Mycroft mused, “it had that effect. My agents certainly had their minds wiped for them.” 

“Yeah, in such a way that they became _useless_ ,” said Arthur. “You might as well just shoot Magnussen in the head, if that’s what you want. It would have the same effect, and it wouldn’t expose us to the danger of being in a head that we want to devastate.” 

“But if we just shot him in the head,” said Mycroft, “we would never know what’s _in_ his head.” 

Lestrade said, “I just want to make sure that we’re standing around here casually discussing killing Magnussen.”

“Effectively,” said Arthur. 

“Who’s being casual?” asked Eames. 

Mycroft drew in a breath as if to speak, but then Lestrade said, “Well. About damn time. Let’s do this. How can I help?” 

“Butterflies,” Arthur said suddenly, and stood. 

Eames blinked at him uncomprehendingly. 

“What’s this now?” asked Lestrade with interest. 

“ _Butterflies_ ,” Arthur told Eames meaningfully. 

Eames continued to look mystified. 

“Oh my God,” Arthur bit out at him, “it is our _code word_.” 

“Do we have code words? When did we establish code words?” 

“Last time we—come with me.” Arthur grabbed him by his good shoulder and marched him out of the room, shouting over his shoulder to Tate, “ _Stay_.” 

***

“So they can get into someone’s head and make them go mad,” Lestrade said, once Arthur and Eames had left the room. 

“Yes,” Sherlock said simply. 

“Bloody hell,” remarked Lestrade. “That’s terrifying technology, isn’t it?” 

“It’s a good thing they’re on our side,” said John. 

“They’re available to the highest bidder,” Mycroft said. “We can’t trust them very much.” 

“We can trust them with our lives,” Sherlock said. “And we’re going to. Because we can’t do this without them. And we need to. This is the only way to eliminate Magnussen. If it was simple or safe to assassinate him, you’d have done it already.” Sherlock looked over at Mycroft, who didn’t deny it. “We need to wipe his mind clean, and we need to make it look like an unfortunate accident. Maybe, at the end of it, he’s docile and sweet.” 

“Maybe, at the end of it, he’s a raving lunatic who has to be locked up,” Mycroft said. 

“And do you care?” asked Sherlock pointedly. 

“What about Mary?” asked John. “So we wipe Magnussen’s head clean and we get rid of the blackmail threat. What about Mary?” 

“What about her?” asked Mycroft, his voice hard and cold, and John understood that, he did, because Mary had tried to kill Sherlock and, as Eames had just underlined, there was no one on the planet Mycroft cared about more than Sherlock. But—

Sherlock said it for him, “Mary is pregnant. Mary is having John’s baby. We have to take care of Mary.” 

“What do you propose?” demanded Mycroft sarcastically. “Do you want a happy threesome? Is that what you’re going to propose? How is this going to work?” 

“We want the baby, of course,” said Sherlock. 

John blinked at him, because they hadn’t really discussed this, and he didn’t expect Sherlock to— “Sherlock, you don’t have to—”

Sherlock looked across at him and said impatiently, “It’s your child, John, of course we will keep him or her here and raise him or her. Of course we will. What else could you possibly have thought? Don’t be stupid.” 

This, John thought, was how Sherlock declared his love. He did it like _this_ , by calling him stupid and being impatient, and John had an entire lifetime of this to look forward to, and he couldn’t wait. John suddenly wanted their flat to be empty of all these people, because he hadn’t had time to savor the sudden feeling of completeness in his relationship with Sherlock, and he _wanted_ to. He wanted to spend a million years just staring at Sherlock and thinking: _I love him, and he loves me, and this is a thing we’re doing, and my God, it makes me feel happy and whole and better than I ever have in my life_. 

“Well,” remarked Mycroft, “I don’t think an assassin has much of a chance of winning custody.” 

“Anyway,” added Lestrade, “Mycroft’s really good at resolving custody issues.” 

“I am so weak and fragile,” Sherlock said, “I cannot abide any more comments like that, Lestrade.” 

***

“We,” Arthur hissed to Eames, pressing him up against the wall beside the door to Mrs. Hudson’s flat, “are not doing this.” 

“This is nice, petal,” remarked Eames. “It’s been a while since you pushed me up against a wall.” 

“Listen to me. I am being serious. We are not going into people’s heads specifically to drive them insane.” 

“We did it with Moriarty.” 

“No, _you_ did it with Moriarty, because you are a fucking idiot, and you wouldn’t have come out of it if I hadn’t run in there to rescue you.” 

“So you’ll be there with me every step of the way this time. Much safer.” 

Arthur sighed in frustration. “You’re not listening to me.” 

“I am listening to every word you’re saying, and you’re wrong. We _can_ do this. We can do this brilliantly. I think we can do it if we get to Limbo. That’s the base of his brain, right? If we can erase the memories there, lock them away—”

“In _Limbo_ ,” Arthur said. “Listen to yourself. You want to go into Limbo, in an _enemy’s head_. I don’t even want to go into Limbo in my _own_ head.” 

“I’m saying that that’s how you erase things. Mal locked her life away in Limbo and she forgot all about it.” 

“Yes! Exactly! And look at what happened there, Eames! Horrible things happened! I am not fucking around with Limbo! I am not taking the risk that you jump off a building in front of me, Eames, _fucking hell_ , what do you not understand about that?” 

Eames was silent for a second, looking at Arthur’s wild, exhausted eyes. This, Eames thought, had not been the best time to suggest a risky operation. Arthur liked to minimize risk, but Arthur wasn’t usually overly queasy about it. Their lives were full of necessary risk. But Arthur was raw and hurting and unhappy that he couldn’t shut down into safe-burrow mode. “I’m sorry, darling,” Eames said after a second. 

Arthur shook his head. “Don’t apologize to me, stop being an _idiot_ and—”

Eames drew him in with his good hand and Arthur went, shuddering a breath out against his shoulder. “Oh, love,” he sighed, and kissed his head. “You’d have us a million miles away, wouldn’t you? You’d have us holed up somewhere with sixteen redundant security systems and an entire warehouse of weapons. I’m sorry.” 

“I can’t,” said Arthur against him. “There is so much outside of my control right now and I _can’t_. I can’t have you suggesting we run off into Limbo, getting it into Sherlock’s head that we—Christ, Eames. Your blood was all over my hands _yesterday_.” 

“I know,” Eames said, smoothing a hand over his head, cursing himself for how poorly he’d handled this. Sometimes, he thought ruefully, he got caught up in playing God and proving the impossible possible. Arthur was right when he accused him of that. It had got him into a fucking lot of trouble over the course of his lifetime. “I know, I know, I know.” 

“We’re here because we have to be here and we’ll do an extraction. I’ll even let you try to do an inception, but, _Jesus Christ_ , we _barely_ made it out of inception, Eames, and you _know_ that, and we would need so much planning. We’ve got this ridiculously green team, John Watson is horrible at dreams, and Sherlock is a loose cannon, and I don’t know what the fuck I could even try to do with Mycroft and Lestrade.” 

“We don’t need a team. We did inception all by ourselves.” 

“ _Barely_ , Eames,” Arthur reminded him again. “ _Barely_.” 

“I have a proposal for you,” Eames suggested, and pressed a kiss to the base of Arthur’s neck, just under the perfect collar of his shirt. 

“What?” asked Arthur warily. 

“We get Magnussen under, we use a sedative, and we shoot his bloody brains out.” 

Arthur was silent for a second. “We just stick him in Limbo.” 

“And we don’t worry about him ever coming out.”

“How? He could, and he’d know—”

“He could, and he’d know, but he’d have to know about dreamsharing, about what the fuck Limbo even is. Do you think he does?” 

Arthur was silent again, but Eames could practically hear the thoughts whirring through his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I guess we could just flat-out ask him. Get into the dream and ask him.” 

“His head might be militarized, but how many people in our field know anything about Limbo, can tell him anything about it.” 

“Cobb,” said Arthur. “It would come from Cobb.” 

“Right. So you’ll ring Cobb and you’ll make sure you’re clear. We’ll run this operation, we’ll trap Magnussen into Limbo, and we’ll leave him there. Good riddance.” 

“And how will we explain it?” 

“It’d be easy to explain to Mycroft. Dreamsharing’s tricky and unpredictable. There are casualties.” Eames shrugged. “I don’t think Mycroft would really care.” 

“It’s the same as shooting him, though,” Arthur pointed out, after another moment of thought. “Why not just shoot him in the head?” 

“Because it’s not the same as shooting him. Because he’s not dead. Because he stays alive, in a coma no one can really explain, and it’s a mystery but it’s not a _crime_. Not as far as the public is concerned. It’ll be a great unsolved mystery, but it won’t require a huge cover-up, because dreamsharing itself _is_ the cover-up. And if he does find his way out eventually and wake up, he’ll be too discombobulated to pick up his blackmail scheme again. Everything’s in his head, and his head will be an absolute mess.” Eames didn’t mention how utterly Limbo had shattered Mal’s head. He knew he didn’t need to. 

Arthur said nothing. Arthur stayed with his forehead against Eames’s shoulder, clearly thinking it through. 

Eames kissed the base of his neck again and said, “Then, after we stick Magnussen into Limbo, we’ll go to Siberia.” 

“Siberia,” Arthur said doubtfully. 

“You’ll find a little safe-house, miles away from another soul, and we’ll snuggle under blankets and keep toasty warm through frequent sex. We’ll stay until you feel like you can breathe again, until you stop worrying so much, until you trust that I will never leave you. We’ll stay until you get your equilibrium back. How’s that?” 

There was a very long silence. Eames listened to a clock ticking somewhere, to Arthur’s heavy breaths. 

“Yes,” Arthur said finally. 

“Yeah,” Eames agreed, and brushed a kiss over Arthur’s head. 

Arthur made no move to go back upstairs, and Eames didn’t rush him, letting him have a little bit of breathing room to stop panicking. Eames truly _did_ feel terrible for causing Arthur’s panic in the first place, rushing with such enthusiasm into the plan, like a bull in a china shop. But he couldn’t be more explicit with his apology than he was already being, because he didn’t want to articulate Arthur’s panic in words, so he just stayed silent and gave Arthur time, and he knew that Arthur understood what he was doing and appreciated it. 

Mrs. Hudson’s door opened. She looked only mildly surprised to see them. “Hello,” she said cheerfully. 

“Possibly hold off on taking the rubbish out to the bins until we’ve handled the assassin problem,” suggested Eames, smiling. 

“Oh, I keep forgetting,” sighed Mrs. Hudson, and went back inside. 

***

“Okay,” said Arthur, when they arrived back in the lounge. He looked much calmer than he had. “We can do it.” 

Mycroft lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Really? I thought it was impossible.” 

“I’m very convincing,” said Eames, and grinned, looking pleased with himself. 

Arthur ignored him, resuming his seat. Tate, tail wagging, leaped into his lap, and Arthur scratched behind his ears absently. “The main challenge is going to be access, of course.” 

“What kind of access do you need?” asked Lestrade. 

“We need to get him alone in a room for a little while. At least an hour.” 

“An entire hour?” asked Sherlock. 

“Look,” Arthur said mildly, “Eames and I don’t know what we’re doing. We’ve never driven someone insane before. We’re feeling our way here.” 

“It seems to me that Moriarty could do it in just a few minutes,” said Sherlock. 

“Well, Moriarty was an evil expert,” said Arthur. 

“I thought you were some kind of dreamsharing expert,” said Lestrade. 

“Exactly,” Arthur agreed. “That doesn’t mean I’m _evil_.” 

Lestrade looked doubtful about that claim. 

John decided it was better that they not get into Eames and Arthur’s criminal status. He knew their legality was dubious, but it turned out, in John’s experience, that most people’s legality was dubious. He’d married an assassin; he was a doctor who’d killed lots of people; the most powerful man in the British government had frequently turned a blind eye to murder; and the second most powerful man in the country was blackmailing apparently everyone. In the scheme of things, Eames and Arthur’s illegality was less worrying than most. 

John said, “So you need access to Magnussen, undisturbed, for at least an hour.” 

“Yes,” said Arthur. “If we’re going to do this, I obviously need to be in there with Eames, I won’t let him go in alone, so we’ll need someone to stay topside and keep watch.” 

“I can do that,” John volunteered. “I hate being in there anyway.” 

“Good,” Eames said. “That’ll work.” 

“I want to go in,” Sherlock said. “I want to see Magnussen’s head.” 

“That won’t be necessary,” Arthur said. 

“It’s not a bloody tour group,” Eames said. “Why do people always think that they can go into dreams like they’re tourists? Maybe we should champion dreamsharing tourism.”

“A challenge for another day,” Arthur replied drily. 

“I’m not just going in to be a tourist. I’ll be helpful.” 

“Again: because of your enormous dreamsharing expertise?” 

“Because I understand how mind palaces work,” said Sherlock evenly. “People with mind palaces in their heads are different than your average idiot. And since I think you got nowhere in my head, surely you recognize the value of that.” 

There was a moment of long, fraught silence. John waited it out. He didn’t want Sherlock in Magnussen’s head but he did recognize the truth of what Sherlock was saying. The only reason John had got anything out of Sherlock’s head was because Sherlock had _let_ him. Surely Magnussen would be even more closed up. 

“Fine,” Arthur said reluctantly. 

“No,” Mycroft said immediately. “Absolutely not.” 

“It’ll be much less dangerous than Moriarty’s head,” Sherlock said. “We’ll be in control in Magnussen’s.” 

“Theoretically,” Mycroft said. “But Arthur thinks this is impossible. How will you know what to expect?” 

“We’re going to do our best,” Arthur said, “because fuck knows I’m not experimenting with wiping my brain or Eames’s. Unless one of you wants to volunteer.” 

Mycroft looked at Arthur like he despaired of his intelligence. 

John said into the silence that followed, “Getting Magnussen alone for an hour…”

Everyone turned to look at him. 

“I think maybe I can do it,” he said. 

“How?” asked Arthur, after a second. 

John looked across at Sherlock’s eyes, hard and glittering back at him, and knew he was right about this. “Because Mary can get to Magnussen. And because Mary’s in love with me. You’ve got a chain of weaknesses, Eames, but you forgot to add the last one: Mary, whose weakness is me. That makes me our way in.”


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Sherlock looked at John, thought of what it felt like to love John to distraction. Sherlock thought of wanting to do anything to keep John happy. Sherlock thought of wanting to do anything to _keep John_. He thought of standing in front of Mary and watching the desperation in her eyes. Mary was nonsensical on the subject of John. Mary would do _anything_ for John. 

Mary would give John Magnussen, if John asked. Mary would _absolutely_ do it. 

“Yes,” Sherlock said, holding John’s gaze. 

He could feel all eyes on the two of them, and at the same time it didn’t matter. Those eyes didn’t matter. What mattered were John’s eyes across the room. John’s eyes, dark blue, a recessive gene, the result of an absence of pigmentation in the iris, and Sherlock could explain John’s eyes scientifically to a precise degree but at the same time could never actually explain _John’s eyes_ and the way he felt the weight of their gaze across a room like a heavy wool coat, a warmth to relax into, a barrier between him and all of the rest of it.

Mycroft said, “Just how do you expect this to work?” 

“I’ll get in touch with Mary,” John said, still holding Sherlock’s gaze. “I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her I need an hour with Magnussen.” 

“Mary will do it. Mary will do anything for John. Mary will even try to kill me for John,” said Sherlock. 

“Okay,” said Eames, “I am not disputing that, but for this to work she’s going to have to believe she’s got a chance with you, John.” 

John finally broke their gaze to frown up at Eames. “I know.” 

“I don’t think you do,” said Eames. “If she thinks you’re playing her, it isn’t just that this plan won’t work, it’s that we’re all basically dead. She’s an assassin with a pretty happy trigger finger.” 

“Do you think I would put Sherlock in danger?” demanded John, and Sherlock felt a swell of happiness in his chest at John’s unerring focus on him. Sherlock had _missed_ that focus. It was selfish to want it back, but it also made him feel safer, because it covered the blind spot that Sherlock’s unerring focus on John left behind. 

“No,” said Eames. “But I think you are the worst bloody actor I have ever seen. Aside from Arthur.” 

“I’m an excellent actor,” Arthur protested. “I just can’t be bothered most of the time.” 

Eames snorted. 

“Acted well enough to make you think I didn’t love you for several years,” Arthur pointed out. 

Eames scowled at him. 

Lestrade said, “This is all very entertaining, but Eames is right: Your poker face is terrible, John.” 

“So I’ll rehearse,” John said, sounding a little desperate. “Look, I’m your only chance and you know it. We’ll make it work.” 

“John can do it,” Sherlock said steadily, and tried to smile reassuringly at John, although he was feeling weary enough that he wasn’t sure how well he accomplished it. “John can do everything spectacularly well when the situation really requires it. He has reliable adrenaline.” 

“Sherlock,” said Eames, “you’re such a romantic.” 

Sherlock tried to level Eames with a glare, but he suspected it was as ineffective as the reassuring smile he had tried to give John. 

“Leave him alone,” Arthur said mildly, because Arthur was an actual not-insufferable person. “We are going to rehearse our asses off for this because this is the trickiest part of the plan. Eames and I will be fine once we get inside, we’re professionals, but this is personal for you and not playing to your strengths, and it involves the love of your life and your pregnant wife who tried to kill him, so yeah, ‘tricky’ is putting it mildly. So we are going to give you exact words to say, and those are the words you are going to say, and you are not going to fucking deviate. There’s no improv on this job.” 

“Unless you’re me,” said Eames. 

“There’s no improv on this job,” repeated Arthur stonily, not even looking at Eames. 

“So you’re going to tell Mary that you need Magnussen for an hour to wipe his brain clean and she’s going to believe you?” asked Mycroft skeptically. 

“Yes,” Sherlock said stubbornly. “Especially if she believes that what we’re trying to do is wipe Magnussen’s brain of any information about _her_.” 

“And you’re insisting on being a part of it,” Mycroft said. “You think she’s going to believe that _you_ want to wipe Magnussen’s brain clean to help her?” 

“ _I’m_ a very good actor,” Sherlock said. Because he _was_. 

“Bloody hell,” Eames said, “he was best man at her wedding. She _expects_ him to put her happiness above his own self-interest. He’s been doing it all along.” 

“As long as that happiness is wrapped up in John’s happiness,” Arthur said. “Which goes back to how John Watson needs to give the acting performance of his life.” 

***

Sherlock was clearly in a tremendous amount of pain and refusing to admit it. John really thought he should go back to the hospital, but his examination of him didn’t return any alarming signals, and Sherlock kept insisting he was fine even as he grew more and more horizontal on the bed John had helped him over to after Mycroft and Lestrade had finally left. 

So John was in the kitchen dissolving painkillers in Sherlock’s tea because Sherlock was refusing the painkillers, because Sherlock said he had to have his head clear to strategize about their approach with Mary. 

“Are you drugging his tea?” asked Eames behind him, startling him. 

“Jesus, do you have to sneak around everywhere?” 

Eames looked amused where he was leaning against the kitchen doorway. “I’m a thief. So yes. Should I be alarmed that you’re drugging him?” 

“He won’t take his painkillers. He needs to take his painkillers.” 

“Don’t give Arthur any ideas on that front,” remarked Eames. 

“If you’re impossible about taking care of yourself then whatever Arthur does to force you into it has my endorsement.” 

Eames didn’t say anything. Eames looked at him and smiled. 

John felt a little silly, standing there with Sherlock’s drugged tea in his hand, Eames smiling stupidly at him. “What?” he asked defensively. 

“You do sound like Arthur. Which means you sound like a person in love. Which you always have. It’s just nice to know that it’s not a secret to you anymore. How does it feel?” 

John took a breath and admitted, “Perfect. It feels perfect.” 

“Yeah,” Eames said, still smiling. “It does. I agree. Listen, I wanted to offer you a word of advice.” 

John was suddenly terrified Eames was about to give him some tip on gay sex. “That’s not—I don’t need—”

Eames laughed. “It isn’t about sex. Christ, you really are the worst fucking actor. You give everything away. We’re going to have to train so hard. It’s something more important than sex. Although never tell Arthur that I admitted there is anything more important than sex.” 

John regarded Eames warily. “What is it?” 

Eames stopped smiling finally, looked at him very seriously and closely. “Don’t let the guilt consume you.” 

John stilled and wished he didn’t give everything away, because he was sure his face was confirming exactly how much guilt he felt. 

“I know you think it’s your fault that he was almost killed—”

“Because it _is_ my fault,” John bit out, keeping his voice down to make sure Sherlock couldn’t overhear. “This isn’t something I’m imagining, Eames; he was shot by _my wife_ , who I brought into our lives, of course it’s my fault.” 

“You didn’t bring her into your lives to shoot him. You didn’t even know what she was.” 

“Right, but—”

“And don’t say that you should have known, because that’s not true.”

“You knew right away.” 

“John, no offense, but I’m really good at what I do. And ferreting out fake people is what I do. It’s not what you do. Not really.” 

“Okay,” John said, realizing that he was breathing fast with the force of his conviction, “even assuming you’re right and it isn’t my fault that I didn’t realize I was marrying an assassin, I brought her into our lives to break his heart, and I accomplished that.” 

“You didn’t do it viciously.” 

“I knew. You told me that I knew. How I felt about him.” 

“You should have known. But you didn’t. Not really. You have protected him with everything in you from the moment you met him. I know you did. I know your type. And, if you let it, this guilt will consume you. He doesn’t blame you. You need to allow yourself your own forgiveness. That’s how you let him love you: better than you love yourself. You have to allow yourself to be the better person that he sees. You have to let yourself _believe_ that. It’s how the whole thing works, John. It is truly, honestly how the whole thing works.” Eames winked at him as if that speech hadn’t been incredibly serious and then walked away. 

John listened to his footsteps going up the staircase to John’s old room, turning Eames’s advice over in his head, and then realized with a start: _John’s old room_. Which brought up the sleeping arrangements. Where was he meant to sleep? John supposed he could take the sofa. 

Taking a deep breath, John walked into Sherlock’s bedroom. Sherlock was a lump under the blankets, and John tried not to feel guilty about that. 

Sherlock said grumpily, “How long does it take for you to drug my tea, anyway?” 

“I didn’t drug your tea,” John denied, probably not very convincingly. Damn it, he had to work on his acting. 

Sherlock managed some semblance of a derisive snort. 

John said, as he put the tea on the nightstand next to Sherlock, “Anyway, you should drink it because you need your rest.” 

“I thought we might have sex,” Sherlock said bluntly. 

John choked and looked down at him. “What?” 

“Isn’t that what people do? People like us? In our situation? Have sex?” 

“Well,” said John, “no, people recovering from gunshot wounds and still in severe pain and who almost died not long ago usually don’t have sex right away, no.” 

“I mean people in relationships.” 

John sat on the bed and looked at Sherlock. “Yes. People in relationships usually have sex.” 

Sherlock looked uncertain. “If you don’t want to have sex with me…” 

“No,” John admitted ruefully, thinking of their snog up against the hospital room door. “I actually really do want to have sex with you.” 

“I understand if it’s weird—”

“I thought it would be weird. But it’s not weird at all. It’s what I _want_ , Sherlock. I swear. Just not now.” 

“You’re sure?” Sherlock said, still looking uncertain. 

“Sherlock.” John pushed Sherlock’s hair off his forehead, then leaned in and kissed him, long and slow and languorous, a kiss with no destination, a kiss that was a promise. “We’ve got a lot of time. We’ve got our whole lives. You’ll get better, and then we’ll have so much sex you’ll stop thinking. That’s going to be my goal, you know. I’m going to steal all of your thoughts from you.” 

Sherlock’s pupils were gratifyingly blown by that statement. “I… Okay… Good,” he stammered. 

John chuckled and kissed Sherlock again lightly. “I’d like to think I’ve already started, but I suspect you’re just out of it because you’re still recovering.” 

“Stupid recovering,” said Sherlock breathlessly. “Stupid gunshot wound.” 

“Yeah,” John agreed wryly. “ _This_ is why the gunshot wound was a bad thing.” 

“Well, it’s one of the reasons, anyway,” grumbled Sherlock. “Are you at least going to get into bed, even if you won’t have sex with me?” 

“Do you want me to sleep with you?” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Of course I want you to sleep with me. Idiot.” 

John kissed him again, then got up and walked over to the other side of the bed and settled under the covers. 

“You could have taken your clothes off,” Sherlock remarked. He snuggled up against John, but then winced at the movement. 

John kissed his thicket of curls and said, “I don’t think me naked in bed with you is going to be conducive to not having sex.” 

“I could…do something at least,” said Sherlock sleepily. “I’m good at sex.” 

John laughed. “I bet you are.” 

“I’m good at everything,” Sherlock slurred out and then started snoring as effectively as if John had succeeded in drugging him. 

***

Arthur was working on the bed, papers scattered all over and laptop on his lap, when Eames walked into the room. Eames could think of a host of better uses for Arthur’s lap. 

Tate, curled up on the floor by the door patiently waiting for Arthur to make room for him on the bed, thumped his tail in greeting. 

“So,” Arthur said immediately, frowning down at whatever he was looking at on his laptop, “I called Cobb and—”

“Oh, God, no, don’t start talking about Cobb,” Eames said, and took hold of one of Arthur’s ankles with his good hand and tugged sharply to pull his leg off the bed. 

Arthur lifted an eyebrow at him and just kept talking. “He’s never had anything to do with Magnussen that he can recall.” 

“Are you still talking about Cobb?” Eames asked, straightening out Arthur’s other leg. “Because I’m not listening to you.” 

“I emailed Yusuf about hooking us up with some of the sedative he used on the inception job.” 

“You are bloody brilliant, petal,” Eames told him, picking his laptop off Arthur’s lap and carefully setting it aside. Once he had dashed Arthur’s laptop to the floor in the heat of passion. That had immediately doused the heat of passion and was not a mistake he would ever make again. “Fucking efficient,” he said, and tipped Arthur backward onto the bed. 

Arthur went, which meant Eames was winning, because Arthur could have pushed him off easily. “What’s all this?” he asked, as Eames unbuckled his belt. 

Eames laughed. “Sometimes, when the object of one’s affection is possessed of a penis, one suffers from an urgent need to…” Eames had been on the path to flippant, he knew he had been, but suddenly he was staring at Arthur’s pants and thinking of bullets and danger and sacrifice and trusting that you were a better person than you thought because the person you loved insisted you were. 

“Eames,” Arthur said, and it wasn’t a nudge to get him moving again, it was a tender and gentle caress. Arthur’s hand settled at the back of Eames’s skull. 

Eames leaned down to press his forehead against Arthur’s abdomen and breathe him in. “Thank you,” he murmured. 

“For what?” asked Arthur, sounding honestly perplexed. 

“Saving my life.” 

There was a moment of silence. “I didn’t. As you keep saying, it was nothing but a flesh wound. Don’t be melodramatic.” 

“Thank you for exerting all of your considerable powers on behalf of my flesh wound.” 

“Any time,” said Arthur, after another second. His fingers rubbed soothingly against Eames’s scalp. Eventually he said, “Was your plan for us to have messy sex on all of my very important work papers?” 

Eames laughed, relieved to be pulled out of his introspection, and dragged himself up a little awkwardly so he could look down into Arthur’s eyes. “Is this a fucking foolhardy plan?” And he didn’t even know if he was teasing about his sex plan or dead serious about their Magnussen plan. 

“ _Yes_ ,” said Arthur. “I’d murder you if you tried to do this plan without me.”

Eames thought Arthur was talking about both, so he responded by talking about both. “There is no one I would rather rush into foolhardy plans with,” Eames said. 

“Yeah, I love you, too,” said Arthur, and pulled Eames’s shirt up over his head. “It’s why I exert all of my considerable powers on behalf of your flesh wounds. I’m pretty fond of most of you.” 

“Most of me?” 

“Tell me about the things you should do when the object of your affection is possessed of a penis.” 

“I can tell or I can show,” said Eames. 

“It depends: Are these good things?” 

Eames laughed. “You’re such a fucking arsehole.” 

“See, you are already onto really good things,” said Arthur, all dimples. 

Eames looked at his dark eyes, bright and swimming with affection for him, and said hoarsely, “Christ, darling, you can say that again.”

So Arthur did. His smile faded and he looked up at Eames seriously and he said, “We’re onto a really good thing.”

“Yeah,” Eames agreed, and kissed the space Arthur’s dimples had just vacated. Then he said, “It’s the sex on the important work papers plan, isn’t it? Bloody good thinking on my part.” 

“I don’t know, so far this plan is just a whole lot of bluster, it seems to me.” 

“Let me change your opinion on the plan,” said Eames. “I don’t think you’ve seen all of my PowerPoint slides yet.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?” 

“It’s sexy,” said Eames. “I promise. Tell me you don’t find PowerPoint slides sexy.” 

“A little sexy,” Arthur admitted. 

“Ha!” said Eames. “I know you so well.” 

***

Sherlock woke to John in his bed. _John_. In his _bed_. Sleeping soundly next to him. 

This was convenient, Sherlock thought, as he lay next to John and studied him and listened to the steady rhythm of his breaths. He could ensure John was all right without even having to move a muscle. 

Sherlock had been exhausted earlier. He couldn’t quite believe he’d managed to fall asleep while in the middle of convincing John they should have sex. But now that he’d woken, he felt wide awake. The silence all around them in the flat was deafening. And all he could think about was the Magnussen plan. All he could think about was John getting in touch with Mary, who was unknowably and unpredictably dangerous. All he could think about was finding a way to make all of this… _work_. 

Sherlock closed his eyes and tried to match his breaths to John’s, tried to relax back into sleep, but it was no good. He knew when sleep was a lost cause, when wakefulness was inevitable. 

Not wanting John to wake to Sherlock brooding—not wanting that to be the memory of their first morning in his bed— _their_ bed—Sherlock rolled out of bed and went into the sitting room, only to find Arthur had gotten there before him, was sitting at the desk frowning at his laptop. 

Arthur glanced at him. “Can’t sleep, either?” 

Sherlock grunted a non-response and let himself collapse onto the sofa. He didn’t want _company_. 

Arthur kept tapping away on his laptop. 

Finally Sherlock said, “Could you not sleep because you’re worried about the Magnussen job?” Because they might as well _talk_. Maybe he did want some company after all, he supposed grumpily. 

“No,” Arthur replied. “I tend not to sleep when I’m working. It’s not really worry, it’s just…a desire to be thorough.” 

“You don’t sleep when you’re working,” Sherlock repeated, looking up at the ceiling. 

“No. And neither do you. That is why you like me so much.” 

Sherlock smiled despite himself. “I don’t like you. I don’t like people.” 

“Eames would call you a liar. You definitely like John.” 

“John is different,” Sherlock said, still looking up at the ceiling. 

“Look,” Arthur said, “don’t worry about John. Eames and I have this covered. We know what we’re doing.” 

“You’re going to kill Magnussen, aren’t you?” said Sherlock evenly. 

Arthur was silent for a telling moment. 

Sherlock looked over at him. 

Arthur said blandly, “What makes you think that?” 

“What Mycroft wants is impossible. You think it’s impossible. There’s no way Eames convinced you otherwise in a few minutes’ time. Eames proposed an alternative plan entirely. One you’re not overly worried about. You’re just going to kill him.” 

There was another moment of silence, then Arthur said, “Not entirely. Not really. It’s… We’re going to kill him in the dream.” 

“Which wakes you up,” said Sherlock, because he remembered that much. 

“Not if you use a certain sedative. With a certain sedative, it sends you down to Limbo.”

“Limbo,” repeated Sherlock, and thought of standing on a roof with Moriarty and thinking of…

Arthur said, “I’ve seen Limbo destroy even the most experienced dreamsharers. Magnussen won’t stand a chance.”


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

“But he does have a chance,” Sherlock said. 

Arthur looked across at Sherlock, who was still and unmoving, looking up at the ceiling. 

“To get out of Limbo,” Sherlock continued, when Arthur said nothing. “Magnussen does have a chance.” 

“Look,” Arthur said. “When I tell you it destroys people… My friend got out of Limbo, but she never figured out which world was real. She ended up jumping out a window. You can trust me when I say that Limbo is going to fuck him up enough that he’ll only be a shadow of who he was. I’ve seen it firsthand.” 

There was a long moment of silence. Arthur tapped blindly at the keys of his laptop and tried not to think about Mal. 

Sherlock said, “I want to do it.” 

“What?” Arthur asked. 

“I want to be the one to kill him. In the dream.” 

Arthur glanced back at Sherlock. He was finally looking back at Arthur, his gaze steady and sure and stubborn. 

“I deserve at least that much,” Sherlock insisted. 

Arthur actually thought he had a point. Magnussen had done far more to Sherlock than he had ever done to Arthur or Eames. The satisfaction of revenge should probably be enjoyed by Sherlock. And it wasn’t worth fighting over. Killing him in the dream was going to be quick and simple. 

Arthur leaned back, away from his laptop, and regarded Sherlock. “You’re sure?” 

“You think I can’t do it? It isn’t even really _killing_ him,” sneered Sherlock dismissively. 

“Sherlock, I honestly don’t doubt you can do anything.” Arthur looked back at his laptop and felt suddenly tired, in a way he didn’t usually while he was working, but it had been a long couple of days and now he was calmly considering who would have the _privilege_ of sending someone to Limbo. Arthur was good at his job but that didn’t mean he didn’t find it alarmingly wearying at times. “You know what?” he said, and closed his laptop. 

Sherlock looked surprised as Arthur scraped back the chair and stood. 

“I’m going to go to bed,” Arthur said. “You should try to get some sleep.” 

“Are you going to get some sleep?” Sherlock asked skeptically. 

“No,” said Arthur, “I’m probably going to wake Eames up with a blowjob. I owe him for earlier this evening.” 

It was satisfying to see Sherlock flush pink. 

Arthur said, “You should do the same thing to John,” and walked up the stairs with a little bounce in his step. His job was ridiculous and sometimes terrifying, but he had Eames upstairs waiting for him, and Sherlock had John now, and maybe they’d gotten a couple of things right, the two of them. 

“Make room,” Arthur told Tate, as he nudged Eames over onto his back. 

“Mmph,” Eames mumbled sleepily. “Are you already done working?” 

“I told Sherlock he could shoot Magnussen in the dream,” Arthur said, pushing the duvet off of Eames. 

Eames rubbed at his eyes and sent Arthur a glower. “Did you also tell him he could have our blanket?” 

“No, I told him he should go wake John up with a blowjob.” 

Eames blinked and then laughed. “Did you? You little minx.” 

“Don’t call me that, that’s not sexy. Do you want me to ravish you or not?” 

“Ravish away, minx,” said Eames. “I won’t have John Watson be the only man in this flat having sex with another man right now. And there’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d ever get to say.” 

***

Sherlock lay on the sofa in shock and thought, _That’s ridiculous. I’m not going to…do that_. And then thought, _Why not?_ John was clearly wary of sex until he was sure Sherlock was fully healed, which was ridiculous because there was plenty that Sherlock could do in the meantime, including what Arthur had suggested. Sherlock was very confident of that. 

Anyway, if anything went wrong, he would have an excellent doctor right there. 

Maybe he _should_ … Sherlock didn’t want it to seem like he was taking Arthur’s advice—because of course he didn’t take anyone’s advice—but maybe doing it this way would get them past the awkwardness. Because otherwise it clearly _was_ going to be awkward, and Sherlock wasn’t looking forward to that, and the cure to awkwardness was, yes, definitely, behaving as if there was nothing to be awkward about. Sherlock could do that. 

That was how Sherlock ended up back in his bedroom, it was how he ended up standing by the bed. But then, once by the bed, he couldn’t think to do anything but stare down at John, who was sound asleep. Sound asleep, there _in his bed_. A piece of him wished irrationally that he had a totem the way Arthur and Eames did, so he could check to make sure this was reality, because it didn’t…it didn’t… Dreams could seem real enough that you lost sight of where they began and ended, wasn’t that what Arthur had been so worried about, wasn’t that what they were going to do to Magnussen? 

Sherlock stood and looked down at John and thought that, if this was a dream, then he was fine with it never ending. He was fine with never going back to reality. If the bullet to his chest had somehow dropped him into some extended Limbo, if he was lying in a coma somewhere, he was all right with staying like this forever. 

Sherlock got on the bed carefully, uncertainly. His intention had been vague, involving pushing aside the blankets, divesting John of the clothing he was still uncomfortably wearing. But he got caught on the fact that his arrival disturbed John, who blinked sleepily up at him. 

“Hey,” he said, his voice a rough rasp to which Sherlock wasn’t entirely accustomed but to which Sherlock fervently hoped he was going to become very accustomed. “What’s wrong? You okay? Anything—”

Sherlock cut off John’s concern by kissing him. Sherlock hadn’t meant to worry him. Sherlock had meant to be _sexy_ , not worrying. 

So Sherlock kissed him. 

John made a small muffled sound of shock, but Sherlock kissed him past it. Sherlock nibbled at John’s lips, traced them with his tongue, and John’s mouth opened for him, and Sherlock tasted him, felt him, chronicled everything he could about him. _More data_ , he thought. He needed _more data_. How was John… _John_? Surely somewhere within was the essence of him, was something Sherlock could locate and quantify and study so as to ensure that he was never without him ever again. 

Sherlock meant to move on from just kissing, but he found that now that he had started he couldn’t stop. He kissed and kissed and kissed, not relenting at all in the steady, questing sweep of the contact. John’s hands were in his hair, pulling through it, and it was another sensation for Sherlock to catalog, for Sherlock to lock away in his mind palace for examination whenever he needed something _good_ to be remembering. 

John was gasping into Sherlock’s mouth now, tiny pants, puffs of exhalation, and Sherlock drew back a little to give him space to breathe, not wanting to suffocate him. 

John managed, “Sherl…” before fading out of breath. 

Which was fine because Sherlock wasn’t interested in talking. Sherlock was now interested in what John’s cheekbones tasted like, his eyebrows, the flutter of his eyelashes, the bridge of his nose, the line of his jaw, the soft skin just behind his ear—ah, _that_ was interesting—the curve of his clavicle. He could reach John’s manubrium but his sternum was covered by his shirt and Sherlock found himself irritated. He had to get to John _right now_. 

He pawed at John’s shirt, trying to determine how to remove it. Surely he used to know how to remove a shirt? Everything seemed fuzzy and unclear at the moment. Maybe he had never known? Maybe he would have to re-learn everything he’d ever thought he knew? 

He finally got the shirt off with a little frantic help from John and he sank open-mouthed kisses along John’s chest, _tasting_ , and John hissed, “ _Yes_ ,” and closed his hands in Sherlock’s hair again. Good, Sherlock thought. This was all _good_. He flicked his tongue out over John’s right nipple, and John twitched and gasped in reaction, and Sherlock smiled and gave that nipple a little more attention before moving on to the left one. 

When John was arching restlessly underneath him, Sherlock finally gave in to the clawing temptation to kiss his way down over John’s abdomen. His fingers were dealing with John’s trousers as he went, and they were doing a terrible job of it. Really, what was wrong with his fingers and their inability to deal with clothing tonight? But eventually he managed to get them out of his way, to make room for him to pass John’s navel and encounter very excellent evidence that Sherlock’s experiment was going well. 

Possibly the best evidence Sherlock had ever encountered in his life. And he had had passionate relationships with a bunch of evidence, frankly. 

Sherlock wished he could pretend that he was excellent at this task, but he had no reason to believe he was particularly good at it. But what he _was_ good at was _paying attention_ , and that he could do in spades. So he _paid attention_ , to every gasp and arch and twist of John’s hands, to every swallowed exclamation, to every half-formed directive, to every “Sherlock” and “yes” and “keep” and “there” and “ _Sherlock_.” 

Who knew, thought Sherlock dizzily, that his name could be said that way? He felt as if he had mixed sodium dioxide with water and hadn’t gotten sodium hydroxide in result. 

John was tugging at him, his breath still quick little pants, and Sherlock rolled away from him, feeling unaccountably winded as well. Maybe he had just…deprived himself of too much oxygen…? 

No, he was aroused, of course, that was it, he was—

John’s hand suddenly slid into his pants, wrapped around him. Sherlock made a strangled noise of surprise, wondering how often he was going to feel unbalanced tonight. 

“Let me,” John managed to gasp, and then moved his hand. 

And apparently Sherlock was definitely not done feeling unbalanced for the evening. 

***

John was concentrating on catching his breath, staring up at the ceiling. His mind was incredibly blank. No, his mind was a hazy canvas of _bliss_. It wasn’t blank. It was filled up with…happiness. Contentment. 

John wanted to feel like this for the rest of his life. He wished he’d known he could feel like this so much earlier. He wondered if he really _would_ get to feel like this for the rest of his life. 

Next to him, Sherlock was likewise catching his breath. John let himself bask in a moment of pride, and then frowned. 

He turned and gave Sherlock a (very gentle) shove. “Idiot.” 

Sherlock gave him a hurt, bewildered look. “What? I thought that was—”

“That was spectacular. Of course that was spectacular. But you’re _recovering_.” 

Sherlock waved his hand around. “I’m fine. Was it spectacular?” 

John felt Sherlock’s pulse. Sherlock sighed and let him. His skin wasn’t clammy and his pulse was strong. 

“Are you in any pain?” John asked him. “Any pain at all?”

“No,” Sherlock replied. “Of course, the adrenaline could be blocking the pain.” 

“Then I’ll check again in a few minutes,” said John. 

“Fine. And, in the meantime, let’s discuss exactly how spectacular that was.” 

John chuckled. “Of course you’d be smug about this.” 

“I’m not being smug,” denied Sherlock. “I’m collecting data. I need more data. I didn’t have time to get enough.” 

John looked at him, sweaty and tousled on the bed next to him. _His_. John smiled fondly and said, “You’re going to assemble all this data?” 

“Of course.” 

“And do what with it?” 

“More spectacular sex,” said Sherlock. “Obviously.” 

John stretched out next to him, propped up on his elbow. “You’re going to kill us with good sex.” 

Sherlock looked pleased. “There are worse ways to go.” 

John looked at Sherlock’s chest. He was still wearing his T-shirt, and underneath it, John knew, was the scar that Mary had put in him permanently. Mary, who made everything about _them_ so precarious. 

John rolled to lean over Sherlock, to look down into his every-color eyes. John said fiercely, “We’re going to have so much time for you to collect so much data.” 

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, with matching fierceness. “We are.” 

***

“Good morning,” said Eames, looking amused, when John and Sherlock finally emerged from their bedroom. “Are we ready to get to serious work?” 

John wanted to say no. John wanted to hole himself up in Sherlock’s bedroom and never come out. John wanted the problem with Mary to just _go away_. The temptation to just pull the blankets over their heads had been overwhelming. 

And then John had remembered that wishing the Mary problem away also meant wishing his _child_ away, and then he felt like the worst person ever. So no. They had to resolve the Mary problem so that he could move on, with Sherlock, and with his child, the way Sherlock had said. That’s what they had to do. 

So John said, “Yes. We’re ready.” 

Eames was leaning by the window, and he tossed a ball to Tate. Tate went running after it enthusiastically. 

Arthur walked in from the kitchen carrying mugs. “No throwing balls in the house.” 

“But we’re not in our house. I thought that was just an our-house rule.” 

“It’s an every house rule.” 

“Sorry,” Eames told Tate. “Your beloved Arthur says we can’t play anymore.” 

Tate wagged his tail and went hopping over to Arthur hopefully. 

“Not in the house, Tate,” Arthur told him, as he put the mugs he’d been carrying on the desk. Tate seemed to accept this, settling by Arthur’s feet. Arthur turned to John and Sherlock. “Okay, you two. Look a bit alive. We’ve got a lot to cover today.”

“I’m looking alive,” John said defensively, aware that he’d just spent a little while being distracted by Eames and his dog. 

“Go get tea,” commanded Arthur. 

John glared at him. And went to make tea. But only because he really wanted tea. And he knew Sherlock would want some, too. 

“So Mary should be easy to make contact with,” Arthur said, his voice raised for John’s benefit in the kitchen. 

John wanted to ask what about Mary had turned out to be _easy_ so far. 

“Because Mycroft says she’s been monitoring your house, waiting for you to come home, John,” continued Arthur. 

Monitoring the house? thought John. Wasn’t that a bit…creepy? 

Sherlock said, “You’ve been in touch with Mycroft?” sounding horrified. 

“Of course I’ve been in touch with Mycroft,” Arthur replied. “It’s all-hands-on-deck for this project.” 

“Yes, but _Mycroft_ ,” muttered Sherlock. “ _Honestly_. I wouldn’t trust him with any plan. I’d sooner drug him than trust him with a plan.” 

“He isn’t trusted with the plan,” said Arthur calmly. “We’re just using him for information.” 

“And does Mycroft feel like sharing this information?” asked John, walking back into the lounge with the cups of tea, one of which he handed to Sherlock before sitting beside him. He wished that he sounded less bitter about being kept in the dark, but, well, he _was_ bitter. And a lot of terrible stuff had happened because he’d been kept in the dark. 

“Mycroft may have learned his lesson about keeping information to himself,” remarked Eames. 

Sherlock snorted. “Mycroft never learns _lessons_.” 

“As long as I’m around, Mycroft can’t keep any information from us,” said Arthur. “I put feelers out on Mary, too. I was trying to determine the best way to approach her, if she’s under Magnussen’s protection. Mycroft’s right: She’s monitoring your house. She _wants_ you to make contact, John.” 

“Of course she does,” said Sherlock simply. Sherlock left a lot of things unsaid— _she loves you; anyone who loves you wants desperately to see you_ —but John felt like he heard all of them as clearly as if Sherlock had been shouting anyway. 

John sipped his tea to give himself some time. It was far too hot and scalded his tongue. Then he said, “So I guess I’ll just…go home?” 

“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “To me it seems too easy and like it could be a trap. She’s trigger-happy, I don’t really want to give her an opportunity to—”

“I’ll go with John,” Sherlock said immediately. 

John looked at him in surprise. 

“Great,” said Arthur drily. “So instead she’ll shoot both of you?”

“She isn’t going to shoot either of us,” Sherlock said. “I’m going to go with John to help convince her that there are no hard feelings and I’m on her side and they have a chance at reconciliation.” 

“No hard feelings?” said Eames skeptically. “The woman just made a pretty good attempt at killing you, and you’re going to convince her that you have ‘no hard feelings’?” 

“I need to be part of this part of the operation,” Sherlock insisted stubbornly. “She’ll never believe John on his own.” 

“That’s not true,” John protested, hurt. “And I don’t want you involved, Sherlock. You’ve already been put through a lot because of—”

“I’m involved,” Sherlock cut him off mildly. “Because I want to be involved with _you_. And she’s part of being involved with _you_.” 

John swallowed around his protestation of guilt. He glanced at Eames instinctively, who was watching him knowingly. 

After a moment of silence, Eames said, “Sherlock’s right. He has to go with you. Sherlock’s olive branch will defuse Mary.” 

Arthur started to protest. 

Eames held up a hand and said, “She’s trigger-happy when she perceives a threat. If you remove all threats, she’s as docile as a lamb.” 

“Have you ever met a lamb?” asked Arthur. 

“No. And neither have you. So you don’t know if Mary’s like a lamb or not.” 

Arthur looked annoyed. 

John said, “Could we focus here? And stop debating about _lambs_ when I have to go deal with my assassin wife who’s pregnant with my child?” 

“Which is exactly why we have to practice,” Eames replied. “You’re angry.” 

“Do you think so?” asked John hotly. “You’re a proper genius.” 

“I’m not saying you don’t have good reason to be angry. I’m saying that the anger is a liability to this operation, though. She can’t sense that you’re angry. She can’t sense anything but your desire to reconcile.” 

“That’s why we’re going to tell you exactly what to say,” Arthur finished. 

Sherlock said, “They’re right. You’re going to need a script.” His hand stole out and found John’s and squeezed, as if to apologize for saying it. 

“If I’m such a terrible actor, though,” John said reluctantly (because he knew that he was but they didn’t need to be so dramatic about it), “how am I going to deliver a script convincingly?” 

“Because you’re going to be honest about it,” said Eames, grinning widely. 

There was a beat while John considered this. “Honest about what?” he eventually asked blankly. 

“Honest about the fact that it’s a script,” said Sherlock. “Yes. That’s a good idea. Excellent idea. That’s going to work.”

“Okay, don’t give him any more praise,” Arthur said. “He’ll be unbearable.” 

“Arthur likes to pretend he doesn’t lavish me with praise behind closed doors.” 

“I don’t really want to discuss what goes on between the two of you behind closed doors,” said John, wrinkling his nose. 

“Yeah, moving on,” agreed Arthur. “You’re going to tell Mary you’ve prepared a script.” 

“And she’s not going to find that suspicious?” John said. 

“You’re bad at this,” Sherlock said. “Bad at emotional speeches. You have a hard time getting to the point. How badly did you muck up the proposal?” 

John made a sound that he wished was more dignified than a squeak of indignation. “Because you came back from the dead!” 

“You were mucking it up before that,” said Sherlock, shrugging. “You’re not good at this, and she knows that. So you’ll just say that: ‘I’m not good at this, so these are prepared words.’” 

“And this is going to work, you think?” said John. 

“First rule of any con,” said Eames. “Tell the mark exactly what they want to hear.”


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

John, sitting in his house waiting for his assassin wife to come home, had time to appreciate the intense foolhardiness of everything about their plan. Sherlock seemed so very calm, hands clasped behind his back, walking the perimeter of the room examining everything about it very closely. John had never had Sherlock over to the house before. He had never felt exactly comfortable inviting him over. He didn’t know now if that was because he’d never trusted Mary with Sherlock or because he’d never trusted _himself_ with Sherlock. To be honest, John felt as if he could read everything as a signal of all of the truths he’d just discovered, but if they’d been as obvious as they felt to John in hindsight, he wouldn’t have been so clueless for so long. 

John tried not to think about what Sherlock was gleaning from his close examination of John’s house. 

But that meant John had nothing to think about but their plan. 

“You’re sure this is a good idea?” he asked. 

Sherlock replied, “Stick to your script, you’ll be fine.” 

“Right. But here I am, standing here with you, waiting for an _assassin_ , just like two sitting ducks.” 

“She won’t hurt you,” Sherlock said mildly. 

“I’m not worried about me.” 

“And you’re not standing,” Sherlock pointed out. “You’re sitting.” 

John frowned at him. “How are you so calm?” 

Sherlock stood and rocked from his heels to his toes and looked pleased. “Because I won.” 

“You won…what?” asked John. 

“You,” Sherlock said. 

“You won me?” 

Sherlock nodded. “So what does it matter what Mary does? I know I won. She’s just a loud and ineffective bully.” 

“Who could kill you.” 

“Life’s risky. I’ve almost killed myself plenty of times. I doubt Mary will be my undoing.” 

“She almost was.” 

“But she wasn’t.” 

“This is a pointless conversation.” 

“You’re the one who started it,” said Sherlock, a little petulantly. 

“Let’s just drop it,” John said. 

But that meant they were back to silence, and that left John free to panic a little more. 

“I wish you’d let me take my gun,” John said. 

“No. Mary can’t feel threatened.”

“Do you think she’s even coming?” 

“You’re here. She’s definitely coming.” 

“Maybe she spotted Arthur and Eames watching. Maybe she already feels threatened—”

“Eames may be a bit of an unreliable drama queen, but I trust Arthur when he says they can monitor without being seen. I trust them more than any of Mycroft’s idiots.” 

“Really?” said John, with a pointed look in Sherlock’s direction. 

“What?” asked Sherlock, a little annoyed at having to ask _what_.

“You think _Eames_ is a drama queen? _Eames_.” 

“Well, he is,” said Sherlock defensively. “Undeniably.” 

“Well, thank God only one of us has a flair for the dramatic,” said John drily. “If more than one of us was a drama queen, it would be too many.” 

“Oh, relax, you’re only a minor drama queen compared to Eames,” Sherlock assured him. 

John blinked at him. “ _Me_? _I’m_ not a drama queen.” 

Sherlock gave him one of his smug _I-know-better_ looks. 

“Anyway, you didn’t win me,” John grumbled. “I’m not a _prize_.” 

“That’s true,” Sherlock allowed. “A prize is, by definition, a reward, and I haven’t been quite able to determine what I could possibly have done to deserve you.” 

John was silent for a moment, looking across at him. “You were you,” he said finally. 

“You’re the only person on the planet who thinks that deserves a prize,” snorted Sherlock. 

“You saved my life,” said John. 

“You have that the wrong way ’round,” said Sherlock. 

“No.” John shook his head. “You saved my life first, gave me a reason to go on with a life in the first place. So the only reason I was around to save your life later was because of that.” 

John held Sherlock’s gaze. After a second, a small, tentative smile flitted across Sherlock’s face, like he wasn’t sure what else to do, like he wasn’t sure if that reaction was allowed or not. 

And then he cleared his throat and looked away and resumed his investigation of the room. 

Which meant John was free to sit there feeling tense again. 

Sherlock said, “I’d kiss you if I thought it would shut you up.” 

“I’m not talking,” John told him. 

Sherlock was looking toward the door. “You were thinking,” he said, and then, “Here she comes.” 

And then John heard her step, up the front walk to the stoop. Her hand on the doorknob. The door swinging open. 

***

Sherlock was nervous in a way he could barely remember being at any other point in his life, and he recognized that he was nervous because, for the first time in a very, very long time, he had something at stake to lose. Something at stake that he desperately wanted. Before John, there had been no reason to care particularly whether he lived or died. And even after meeting John, he had wanted to live a bit more, but he had never really thought it would make much of a difference if something happened to him. Now he knew it _would_ make a difference; he knew how much it _mattered_ ; and he actually wanted to live. It was a desire he was conscious of. He wanted every day of time with John that he could get. 

But, as Mary stepped through the door, he pushed down the nerves. John was a terrible actor, so Sherlock had to do this for him. If only one of them was left standing at the end of the day, Sherlock had to make sure it was the right one. 

Mary already had a gun out, already had it pointing at Sherlock. John stared at it, and Sherlock knew that even though they’d been going over this constantly, this was the first time John had really comprehended the full truth about Mary. 

Sherlock looked at Mary’s gun, and then he said coolly, “How good a shot are you?”  
He felt John look at him in alarm, but John, following his instructions, didn’t say anything. 

“How badly do you want to find out?” Mary asked. Her gaze was on him, not on John, which Sherlock thought was a good thing. 

Sherlock smiled at her. He thought it wouldn’t do to show fear. He didn’t want Mary to feel threatened but he didn’t want her to feel victorious, either. He didn’t think John’s rehearsed speech would work unless Mary was feeling a little desperate. Eames was right: the success of a con frequently rested on telling the mark what she wanted to hear, so Sherlock needed Mary in a position where she felt she desperately needed to hear John’s forgiveness. So Sherlock smiled and just said, “I want to know how good you are. Go on. Show me. The doctor’s wife must be a little bit bored by now.”

After a long moment, Mary reached into her bag and pulled out a coin. She glanced up at the ceiling, then tossed the coin up into the air, raised the gun, and shot at it. John flinched at the sound of the gunshot, even with the silencer on it. Sherlock hoped it wouldn’t send Arthur and Eames running. They hadn’t exactly planned on the gunshot—Sherlock was improvising here—but he didn’t think _one_ gunshot would make them skittish, assuming they had even heard it. Mary lowered her gun and looked at Sherlock challengingly. 

“May I see?” asked Sherlock politely. 

Mary finally glanced at John, as if it had just occurred to her that maybe showing off her marksmanship hadn’t been the right approach. But then she looked back at Sherlock and used her foot to slide the coin over to him. 

Sherlock leaned over and picked it up. There was a hole clean through it. He displayed it for John’s benefit, while keeping his gaze on Mary. “And yet, over a distance of six feet, you failed to make a kill shot. Enough to hospitalize me, not enough to kill me. Just like I told you, John. That wasn’t a miss. It was surgery.” 

Mary looked at John and then back to Sherlock, looking quizzical. “What… What do you mean?” 

“Why didn’t you come to me in the first place?” Sherlock kept his voice calm and even. He needed Mary not to be confused enough to panic, he needed her to know—well, think—that he was trying to help her. 

“Because…” Mary looked at John then. “Because I couldn’t bear the idea of you knowing that I lied to you. Of losing you forever. There is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to keep you, John,” she said desperately. 

John looked at her, stone-faced. They had asked John to try to keep his face expressionless. John’s expression was closer to anger, but it wasn’t cold, which Sherlock thought was a good thing. Mary could interpret the emotion as being emotion _for her_ that had been hurt by the lies. 

“Yes. Just as I said, John,” said Sherlock, bringing Mary’s attention back to him. That had been another part of their plan: keep Mary’s attention on him as much as possible. “We’re here today to talk and sort it out.” 

“Sort it out?” said Mary, bewildered but with a flicker of hope. 

It was that flicker of hope, Sherlock thought. That was what he needed to fan. So Sherlock talked. “You see, Mary, I’ve told John, what I know you know.” 

“What?” asked Mary, after a second, reluctantly, as if she didn’t want to indulge Sherlock but she couldn’t bear not to see how this would play out. 

“He’s a doctor who went to war. His best friend is a sociopath who solves crimes as an alternative to getting high. That’s me, by the way.” Best to explicitly cast himself as _the best friend_. Take himself out of the idea of the romantic rival. “Even the landlady of the flat he chose to live in used to run a drug cartel. John is addicted to a certain lifestyle. He’s abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people. So, as I’ve explained to him, it cannot truly be a surprise that the woman he’s in love with conforms to that pattern.” 

Mary looked from Sherlock to John. John’s gaze was focused on far space, which had been their hint to keep himself calm: Look off into space; don’t focus on her. 

Sherlock went on. “John was, of course, understandably upset when he learned that you’d shot me, but I’ve explained to him: You are the way you are because you are what John chose. You are what John loves.” 

Mary looked uncertainly at John. 

This was John’s cue, and he picked it up. He looked at Mary and said, honestly, “My wife. The woman who’s carrying my child.” 

“Yes,” Mary said, sounding teary, and nodded at him desperately. 

“And, as I’ve explained to John, the night that you shot me, you saved my life. You could have killed me, one shot to the center of my forehead. You’re a good enough shot to have done it, clearly. But you didn’t. You incapacitated me with one very precisely calculated shot. And then you phoned the ambulance. You knew that you had to. If you waited for John to phone the ambulance when he discovered me, I would have died.” Sherlock paused, said again, “You saved my life.” This was, in a way, the most important part of the deception. John’s anger could be rationalized by Mary: Your husband didn’t just get over all of this in the snap of a finger. But she had to think that Sherlock genuinely believed that Mary had saved his life. She could not suspect that he felt otherwise, or the entire deception would fall to pieces. 

“So,” Sherlock said, slowly and carefully, “as I’ve told John…” His eyes flickered over to John. “You can trust Mary. She saved my life.” 

There was a long, long moment of silence. As had been planned. It made sense for John to have to gather his thoughts here. 

Mary stared across at John, looking as if she barely dared to hope. She said, “John, I know that there’s so much—”

John lifted a hand to cut her off. Just as was planned. This next bit was delicate, and John didn’t need to have distractions. “I’ve thought long and hard about what I want to say to you,” he said, and then, “These are prepared words, Mary.” 

Mary looked uncertain. “Okay…”

“I’ve chosen these words with care.” John took a deep breath. “The problems of your past are your business. The problems of your future…are my privilege.” 

The phrasing was Eames’s. Sherlock thought it was a bit too clever for its own good—a hallmark of Eames—but John had loved it, because he had liked the double meaning in it. He had thought he could, with conviction, deliver a line in which it would be his privilege to give Mary all of the problems of her future. 

Mary stared at him, and then she wiped away her tears. Still holding her gun. 

John said, “That’s all I have to say.” 

Mary said tearfully, “You don’t even know my name.” 

There was a pause, because obviously John had no script for this. But John said, after a moment, “Is ‘Mary Watson’ good enough for you?” 

Which was perfect. 

Sherlock smiled, and it could have been a smile of joy at the happy reconciliation of his favorite couple. Or, at least, he hoped it could have been. Mary put her gun down and fell onto John in a sobbing, sniveling mess, and Sherlock was relieved that he comported himself with more composure than that. John looked at Sherlock over Mary’s shoulder. Sherlock gave him an encouraging smile, and John patted Mary’s back in a way that he supposed was comforting. 

“Now that that’s out of the way,” said Sherlock briskly, which he thought was perfectly in-character, because it wasn’t like him to dwell on sentiment. He seated himself in the armchair adjacent to the sofa where the bundle of Mary and John were. 

Mary, her face red and splotchy, looked up from John’s chest. 

Sherlock said, “We still have a problem.” 

Mary’s eyes flickered toward the gun. She looked as if she was wondering if it had been a miscalculation to let go of it. _Not yet_ , Sherlock thought. 

Sherlock said, “You were at Magnussen’s that night because he’s blackmailing you.” 

“Yes.” Mary nodded. “He knows everything. I couldn’t bear for him to—”

“You went back to Magnussen after you shot me,” Sherlock cut her off, because, frankly, he’d heard enough of Mary’s proclamations of undying love for John. 

Mary hesitated, then said, “I didn’t know where else to go. He was the only person who knew everything about me, so—”

“We need to get rid of Magnussen,” Sherlock said. 

Mary shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I have no idea where he keeps his blackmail material—”

“I have no doubt he’s an impenetrable fortress,” said Sherlock. “But, you see, now you have me. And I have a brother who’s the British government. More importantly, I have that brother’s computer. So Magnussen and I are going to do a little trade. And you’re going to get us in.” 

***

“So it worked,” Arthur said. 

“Like a charm,” said Sherlock. 

“I don’t know if I would say ‘like a charm,’” said John. “I mean, I tend not to think of confronting your assassin ex-wife as something charming.” 

“I also tend to think of plans as charming when they don’t involve stray gunshots,” remarked Arthur drily. 

“Oh, relax,” said Sherlock. “It gave Mary an opportunity to show off.” He held out a coin with a hole through the middle. 

“Impressive,” said Eames. 

“Hardly,” said Arthur. “I could do that.” 

“Darling,” Eames started, sounding fond. 

“Don’t even start,” Arthur warned him. “You can hit anything with a grenade launcher. Some of us like to have a little more finesse.” 

Eames’s lips twitched. 

“I thought you would appreciate knowing what we’re up against,” Sherlock said. 

“It’s irrelevant,” said Arthur. “ _She’s_ irrelevant to the rest of the plan. She’s on our side now, so it’s not as if we’re going to be involved in any gunfights with her.” 

“I don’t know,” John said. “I thought I was on her side, and then she tried to kill my best friend.” 

“Because he wasn’t your best friend,” said Eames, “and you weren’t really on her side.” 

After a moment, John admitted, “You have a point.” 

Arthur sympathized with how annoying that was. But he just said, “Okay, so she said she’d get us in with Magnussen?” 

“She’s working on it right now,” John said. 

“What did you tell her about us?” asked Arthur. 

“Nothing,” said Sherlock. “Why does she need to know our plan? I told her we needed to take down Magnussen, and that we needed her to arrange a meeting and get us into his house. So that’s what she’s doing.” 

“Security’s going to be a problem, though,” said Arthur. “Maybe we don’t need to bring guns with us, but we need to bring the PASIV, and if there’s any question of—”

“It’s not going to be a problem,” Sherlock said, shaking his head. 

“Why not?” asked Arthur flatly. 

“Because I told her I was bringing government secrets with me. Magnussen will let me in with anything I care to walk in there with, under the banner of ‘government secrets.’” 

“She fell for that?” Arthur said. “The idea that you’d sell your own brother out?” 

“There’s no love lost between Mycroft and me.” Sherlock shrugged. 

“You Brits are all the worst judges of character I have ever seen,” remarked Eames. 

“ _You’re_ British,” Arthur reminded him. 

“I’m a very special Brit,” Eames told him. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. 

“I’m just saying,” Eames continued, “that the idea that there’s ‘no love lost’ between you and Mycroft is preposterous. The two of you have the most complicated love-filled sibling relationship I have ever been privileged to witness.” 

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell if complicated relationships are the result of love or hate,” Arthur pointed out. 

“Ah,” said Eames, “you’re right, it _is_ a thin line.” 

“There is no love lost between Mycroft and me,” Sherlock repeated stonily. 

“And, anyway, also no evidence that Mary is British,” added John bitterly. “Who knows what the hell she is?” 

“She’s American,” says Eames. “Americans are all gun-crazy.” 

“Do you just say whatever ridiculous thing comes into your head?” Arthur asked, exasperated. 

Eames considered. “Yes.” 

Arthur sighed. “At any rate, she is American. I can tell you more about her, if you like.” 

“Later,” Sherlock said. “For now, go and get the PASIV out of hiding and ready to go. We should get news of the meeting any minute now.” 

Arthur nodded and took the stairs two at a time, Tate at his heels. He pulled the PASIV out from where he’d hidden it and opened it to check it. And yeah, maybe he ran a hand lovingly down the side of it, although he withdrew his hand hastily when Eames walked in, because Eames was always teasing him about his unnatural relationship with the PASIV. 

Tate barked a joyful greeting at Eames, as if it had been years since he’d last seen him and not a minute at most. 

Eames patted him absently, then said to Arthur, “I knew the plan would work.” 

“Did you come up here to gloat?” asked Arthur, amused. 

“No, I came up here to make out with you a bit, since Sherlock and John are busy making out downstairs and I was feeling left out. But I thought I’d gloat first.”

“Gloating doesn’t seem conducive to getting me to make out with you.” 

“I figure you might kiss me just to wipe the smirk off my face.” 

“And I don’t know why you’re gloating, we both worked on the plan, gloating doesn’t even make—” Arthur stopped talking abruptly. He had a hand on Eames’s chest to half-heartedly keep him away from him and he had the other hand on the PASIV. 

Eames was leaning over him, nearly trapping him up against the low dresser in the room, and Arthur saw the realization hit Eames at the same moment Arthur had it. 

“They were downstairs _making out_?” Arthur said. Did anything seem more unlikely than that Sherlock and John would suddenly start engaging in public displays of affection?

“Fuck,” Eames said, and pushed away from Arthur. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Arthur echoed, because he never thought Eames swore with enough conviction. He grabbed the PASIV out of instinct, but when he ran down the stairs the apartment was, just as he’d suspected, deserted. 

“Fucking double-crossing son of a bitch,” Eames snapped, as Arthur pulled out his cell phone. “Who are you calling?” 

“Mycroft, to—”

The sound of the helicopter cut him off. 

Eames, wide-eyed, leaned his head out the window. “Where the _fuck_ are they landing a chopper over here?” he demanded, staring out over the roofs. 

“They had a _helicopter_ planned?” Arthur said. “If Magnussen doesn’t kill Sherlock, I’m going to.” 

“Get in line,” Eames said. “There’s a very long line.” 

“Why do you persist in ringing me?” Mycroft asked when he answered the phone. 

Arthur said, “Your fucking idiot of a brother is taking a helicopter to go visit Magnussen without us.” 

There was a moment of silence. “But the plan was—”

“No longer in effect, apparently,” Arthur snapped at him. “Get us a helicopter. Now.”


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

“I thought we were working _with_ them,” John said, as he followed Sherlock’s sprint down Baker Street. 

“Change of plans,” Sherlock threw back over his shoulder. 

“But you were the one who got them involved in the first place!” John shouted, sounding cross. 

Sherlock barreled his way into the agreed-upon building and paused to look at John. “I only needed them because I didn’t have you,” he pointed out. 

John blinked, and Sherlock went dashing over to the lift. 

“Okay,” John said, catching up to him again. “Granted that—”

“Listen to me,” said Sherlock impatiently, pulling John onto the lift with him. “Their plan was never going to work.” 

“It seemed like a pretty solid plan,” John insisted. “They know what they’re doing with—”

“Trap Magnussen in Limbo?” Sherlock sneered. “You think that’s a solution?” 

“To getting rid of Magnussen. Yes. Why don’t you?” 

Because Sherlock didn’t trust Limbo. Because people got out of Limbo. Because even Arthur admitted that people could get out of Limbo. If anybody could get out of Limbo, it was Magnussen. 

The elevator door opened, saving Sherlock from answering. 

“Sherlock,” John said, struggling a little bit as Sherlock dragged him along, up the stairs to the roof. 

The helicopter was landing, sending a breeze that whipped Sherlock’s coat around his legs, John’s hair into disarray. 

John grabbed Sherlock’s arm, whirled him around to face him. “What is your plan, Sherlock?” John had to yell to be heard over the din of the helicopter. 

Sherlock looked at John and thought, _To protect you. My plan is to protect you_. Then he caught John’s face between his hands and kissed him, hard and fierce. 

John, after a second, broke the kiss and said, “Don’t think you can stop every argument from here on out by kissing me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Sherlock, and knew he was smiling as he turned and strode to the helicopter. 

***

And that’s what Sherlock remembered afterward. When he thought back on it later, sitting in the helicopter with John, heading toward Magnussen, he remembered that he was smiling. He remembered that there was a calmness to knowing your purpose, to knowing that you had to do anything to achieve your purpose, to knowing that you had examined every eventuality and decided that this was the best one. 

John looked perplexed as he watched London fall away from them, the helicopter becoming airborne once again, but he saved his questions for when the helicopter landed again, so Sherlock spent the duration of the flight looking out over his city and thinking of the man next to him. Magnussen was protecting Mary, yes, but that wasn’t the point. If Eames was to be believed, Magnussen wasn’t going to stop until Magnussen had Mycroft, and Sherlock was the key to that, and _John_ was the key to _that_. Sherlock couldn’t just let something that important be left up to the vagaries of a dream state that could be escaped. Sherlock couldn’t consciously leave John in such a precarious situation. 

Sherlock had to strike a deal with Magnussen. Or Sherlock had to _actually deal_ with Magnussen. One or the other. 

And he was ready. 

***

John watched the helicopter make its descent and tried to determine which question was the first he wanted to ask Sherlock. He really wanted his first question to be, _Have you lost your mind, what do you think you’re doing?_ He supposed that was two questions, though. 

They ducked out of the helicopter and stood on a vast expanse of lawn, looking up at a huge and painfully modern house. 

“Charming,” John said, and looked at Sherlock. “What are we doing here?” He was impressed with how calm and even his tone was. 

“This is Appledore, of course,” said Sherlock. “We’re going to have a conversation with Magnussen.” 

“How did you even set this up?” asked John. 

“Magnussen’s actually been very eager to speak with me all along,” Sherlock said. 

“Why didn’t you tell Arthur and Eames that?” John demanded. “Why go through all this?” 

“We needed to take Mary out of the equation,” Sherlock said simply. “Get her back to thinking we’re on her side. Arthur and Eames were right about that.” 

“And where’s Mary now?” 

“Not here,” Sherlock said simply. “This doesn’t have anything to do with her. Her importance has been marvelously exaggerated.” And then Sherlock turned and started walking up to the house.

John swore and followed him. 

“Oh, look,” Sherlock remarked, “an escort.” And then a couple of obvious bodyguards were upon them and ushered them into the house and onto a lift. 

When the lift opened, they were in an enormous, airy room with a wall of windows looking out over the back gardens where the helicopter had just dropped them off. The helicopter had departed now. The back gardens were empty and apparently peaceful. 

Magnussen was sitting on the sofa drinking something. He nodded at the bodyguards, who left, and then raised his glass toward them. “I would offer you a drink,” he said, “but it’s very rare and expensive.” 

John glanced at Sherlock for guidance. 

Sherlock looked remarkably unruffled. He clasped his hands behind his back and went about examining the room they were in with mild interest. 

“Very hard to find a pressure point on you, Mr. Holmes,” Magnussen remarked, standing and walking toward them. 

“Really?” Sherlock replied. “I should have thought it would be remarkably easy for a master blackmailer such as yourself.” 

“The drugs thing I never believed for a moment,” Magnussen said. “Anyway, you wouldn’t care if it was exposed, would you?”

“My brother would,” Sherlock remarked. 

Magnussen smiled at Sherlock, studying him closely. “He would. But it wouldn’t destroy him. He wouldn’t go to any lengths for _that_. But for _you_. The fact of _you_.” Magnussen whirled suddenly, pointing at John, who froze in instinctive reaction. “You and John Watson. Your damsel in distress.” 

“I think John would probably object to that characterization,” noted Sherlock lightly. 

“Indeed. I suppose the more accurate damsel in distress would be Mary Watson. Carrying inside of her an adored Watson child. And with more painful, damaging secrets than you can imagine. And then dropped right in my lap.” Magnussen paused and looked at Sherlock again, smiling broadly. “It’s like Christmas. Because, you see, Mycroft Holmes’s pressure point is Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlock Holmes’s pressure point is John Watson, and John Watson’s pressure point is his wife.” 

“We’ve already had this demonstration,” John snapped at him, hands closing into fists. 

“Have you? Well, yes, of course, you must have figured it out. I own John Watson’s wife, I own Mycroft Holmes.” 

John wanted to say that Mary could burn in hell for all he cared, except that Mary was pregnant. It wasn’t, John thought, that Mary was the key to Magnussen’s power. It was that the _baby_ was. Otherwise, John would have no reason to worry about what happened to Mary at all.

“I suppose,” remarked Magnussen, “that you want everything I have on the woman now known as Mary Watson. All the dead bodies she’s left in her wake. Want to keep and protect her forever.” 

And that was when the sound of the other helicopter became clear. Actually, the sound of a whole cadre of helicopters. 

John looked up, to the expanse of glass, watching them approach. 

“Interesting,” said Magnussen. “Look, the cavalry has arrived. How will you explain to darling big brother that you were here to sell me state secrets? All to keep a freelance assassin from being prosecuted for her crimes? Her crimes, which, by the way, include trying to kill you.” 

“I’m difficult to kill,” Sherlock said. 

“So far,” said Magnussen, looking amused, and then he walked out onto the terrace to watch the helicopters approach. 

John grabbed Sherlock’s arm as Sherlock went to follow him. “Sherlock,” John hissed. “What can you possibly be hoping to accomplish here?” 

“Everything,” Sherlock shot back in a furious whisper. “I get everyone safe in one fell swoop.” 

“ _What_ fell swoop?” John demanded. 

Sherlock shook his grip off and walked out onto the terrace to stand beside Magnussen, watching the helicopters approach. 

“No,” Sherlock said casually. 

“What?” Magnussen looked at him with little interest. 

“I don’t want anything you have on Mary. I don’t actually care very much about Mary.” 

“Well, no, _you_ don’t, but John—”

“He doesn’t,” Sherlock said, and then Sherlock smiled. John watched and strained to listen, as the helicopters got closer and closer and louder and louder. “This is what you have wrong. This is your fatal mistake, Mr. Magnussen. I care about John, and I care about Mycroft, and I’m the link between the two that makes it desirable for you to destroy them, through me. Do you know who I _don’t_ care about?”

Magnussen stared at him. 

A sudden realization slammed into John as he stood there. “Sherlock,” he said, but the noise of the helicopters drowned him out. “ _Sherlock_ ,” he said, more loudly, more urgently. 

If Sherlock heard him, he didn’t flinch, didn’t move his gaze away from Magnussen, not even for a heartbeat. Sherlock just shouted over the cacophony, “I don’t care about _me_ ,” and pulled a gun from his coat pocket and lifted it to Magnussen’s head. 

Magnussen lifted his eyebrows. 

Mycroft’s voice came booming out from one of the helicopters. “Sherlock! Put down the gun and step away!” 

“Oh, it’s fine,” Magnussen said, waving his hand dismissively toward the helicopters, looking amused at Sherlock. “He’s harmless. See, you’re not Mary, are you? For all that you think John Watson is drawn to dangerous people, you’re not a person who can kill in cold blood like this. You’re not a person who can look me in the eye and do it. That’s _why_ John Watson loves you. That’s why John Watson _chose you_.” 

John held his breath, looking at Sherlock. 

Sherlock’s aim didn’t falter in the least. His eyes were narrow on Magnussen. 

John said, as loudly as he could, “Sherlock. Put down the gun.”

“Who said,” Sherlock responded, “that anything about my blood is cold?” 

And what happened then was blood started seeping out from a bullet hole directly between Magnussen’s eyes. 

Sherlock, shocked, stumbled backward, his hand holding the gun flailing a little bit. John made a leap for Sherlock, grabbed the gun, got it out of his hand, because Christ knew Sherlock wasn’t one to trust with guns around. 

Magnussen collapsed to the terrace. John was quite sure he was dead before he even hit the flagstones. 

“But I didn’t shoot him,” Sherlock said breathlessly, staring at his body. “I never pulled the trigger.” 

Mycroft was shouting over the speakers about putting the gun down, and now an entire SWAT team was flooding its way up on the patio, guns pointed at Sherlock. 

“He didn’t shoot him,” John said. “This gun was never fired. It wasn’t us. _It wasn’t us_.” 

*** 

“Which one of you did it?” Mycroft demanded, standing in the tiny interrogation room looking thunderous. 

Arthur, leaning against a wall, said, “I’m not thrilled to death with the treatment we’ve been receiving here. I want to call my embassy.” 

“Your embassy doesn’t want anything to do with you,” Mycroft snapped. “You’re an international criminal who just—”

“You want to back off of Arthur, mate,” said Eames casually, watching his poker chip flip over and under his knuckles as he sprawled in the room’s one chair. “Because I don’t like it when I have to fight on Arthur’s behalf. It makes me feel like some kind of Knight of the Round Table; it’s all a bit too much on the nose.” 

Mycroft looked between them. “I know it was one of you.” 

“Here’s what you need to know,” Eames said. “He was a major problem for you. And now he’s gone. You wanted him gone anyway. In a way that couldn’t be traced back to you. And this can’t.” 

“They will always think there was a government cover-up—”

“That’s a minor problem compared to the problem you had,” Arthur snapped. “Are you charging us with something?” 

There was a long moment of silence. 

Mycroft finally said, “No. But you need to leave this country.”

“Gladly,” Eames said, standing. “To be honest, I didn’t want to come back here and take this job in the first place. That was all Arthur. A little gratitude toward him wouldn’t be remiss.” 

Mycroft looked comically disbelieving. “Gratitude?” 

“He saved your brother’s life,” Eames said. “You should be throwing him a fucking parade.” Eames shoved past Mycroft, not bothering to be gentle. 

And Arthur was going to follow without another word, because what was the _point_? Except that, halfway out the door, he just _couldn’t_. He turned back and stalked back into the room.

Eames said, “Arthur?” 

And Arthur marched up to Mycroft and said, “You’re an idiot. He fucking adores you and you should have his fucking back. You know the reason he went off-plan like that? Because he’s not used to loyalty. Because he doesn’t expect people to back him up. Because he’s not confident of being caught when he falls.”

Mycroft bristled. “I have always—”

“I’m not talking about your secretive manipulative _babysitting_. I’m talking about the fact that _you_ got him into a situation that put at risk the thing he loves most in the world, and you’re the most powerful person in this ridiculous country, and you were going to let him hang for that. You called in the fucking _cavalry_ on him. He’s your brother. I wanted one helicopter, so I could get the job done quietly. You went after him like he’s your public enemy number one.” 

“Your plan ended up with someone dead.” 

“It was always going to end up with someone dead, Mycroft. This was the right person, and the right result, and the right limitation of its fallout. I’m not losing sleep over this one. I am putting it on my fucking _resume_.” Arthur turned on his heel and marched past Eames, who was standing in the doorway watching him in surprise. “Let’s go,” Arthur snapped at him. 

“Darling,” said Eames, hurrying to catch up to him. “Can we pause just a second so I can blow you in an alley or something on the way to Baker Street?” 

***

Mrs. Hudson met them at the door and fell on them with hugs. Eames could have laughed at the look of astonishment on Arthur’s face at that. Arthur was not a person who received hugs gracefully. 

Mrs. Hudson released Arthur and moved to embrace Eames, saying, “I know it was one of you who did it so Sherlock didn’t have to. And _thank you_ for that.” 

“Christ,” said Arthur, sounding stunned, “how do you know so much about it?” 

“It’s all over the news, of course.” 

Arthur muttered something. 

Eames said to Mrs. Hudson, “Normally Arthur runs much cleaner operations.” 

“Oh, I’m sure. I’m going to keep that in mind if I ever need anything. It was _so_ nice meeting you, dears. Give your lovely little dog a cuddle for me.” Then Mrs. Hudson went back into her flat. 

Arthur said, “We are never taking any jobs in London ever again.” 

Eames said, “We will if Mrs. Hudson rings us. She makes excellent biscuits.” 

Arthur rolled his eyes and started up the stairs. Eames followed him into the lounge, where Sherlock was by himself, lying on the sofa staring up at the ceiling. 

“What the fuck?” was what Arthur said, but it wasn’t really unkindly. It was more honest bewilderment. Arthur wasn’t used to having people go off-plan when he was in charge. 

Sherlock looked at them and sat up and said evenly, “Which one of you was it who pulled the trigger?” 

“Which do you think?” asked Arthur flatly. 

Sherlock regarded them expressionlessly. “I suppose it depends on which of you is the better shot.” 

“We’re both equally fabulous shots,” Eames replied. “And a thank-you wouldn’t be uncalled for, because one of us, or both of us together, just saved your arse.” 

“It wasn’t necessary,” Sherlock said. “I was prepared to—”

“It was necessary for _John_ ,” Arthur snapped. “For fuck’s sake, Sherlock, it was necessary for _John_. You know he loves you. You know that after everything that happened the two of you finally had a chance. And you were willing to throw that out the window—”

“To keep him safe—” Sherlock started. 

“He’d rather have you!” Arthur retorted. “Christ, he would rather have you than…” Arthur trailed off and tangled his hands into his hair and looked generally exhausted and Eames watched him carefully. The key to Arthur, Eames thought, was to be there exactly timed to catch the collapse. 

Arthur dropped his hands and looked at Sherlock and said, “You can’t keep him safe, Sherlock. It’s impossible to keep him totally safe, and what you’d have to do to get there wouldn’t make him happy anyway. You have to trust him to be helping you to keep himself safe, and you can’t put yourself in unnecessary danger, because that’s breaking the trust that he’s had to place in you. You each have to trust the other to know that you’re carrying around each other’s most precious thing in the universe.” Arthur sighed heavily. “Fuck. Don’t do it to him again. You find another way. You find it with him. Or it won’t work. We’re going now.” Arthur turned and Eames listened to him march up the stairs. He didn’t seek out Eames, and Eames knew it was because he didn’t feel capable at the moment of admitting how much he’d exposed. 

And yet, at the same time, Eames wondered why Arthur thought he’d exposed anything at all. As if Eames didn’t already know that he was Arthur’s most precious thing and the deal was he wouldn’t do anything reckless. Eames had learned that lesson the hard way the last time they’d been in London. 

Sherlock looked at Eames and bit out, “Don’t pretend you don’t understand why I—”

“No, I do understand. But Arthur’s right. To make it work, you can’t do that anymore. I’ve already said this to John, but…you have to accept how much he loves you. That’s the only way it works.” 

After a second, Sherlock said, “I’m going to take relationship advice from two career criminals?” 

Eames said, “Honestly, Sherlock, that relationship is the only thing I’ve got right so far. Where is John, anyway?” 

There was another moment of silence. “Dealing with Mary. She… They arrested her. There was evidence all along. An entire thumb drive, it turned out, with… She hasn’t been arrested for shooting me, she’s been arrested for everything else.” 

“And why aren’t you with him?” 

Sherlock looked down at his hands. “He asked me not to be. I think it was too much to… He asked me not to be.” 

Eames, after a moment, walked over and sat next to Sherlock on the sofa. 

Sherlock looked at him in obvious surprise. 

Eames said, “I don’t blame you. For going rogue on the plan. I understand why you did it. I know that you didn’t trust anyone to have your back on that. And you’re right, we wouldn’t have supported the idea that you had to sacrifice yourself to get us out of this, but we would have listened and we would have found another way, like Arthur just said. But I understand why you didn’t come to us, because you’re not used to that. It isn’t the way your life’s worked. Mycroft isn’t the sort of person who causes someone to have healthy reactions, and Mycroft’s shaped a lot of you. But this is what I want you to know: John’s a lot like Arthur, in that John is _loyal_. John loves you, and John will never desert you. John married someone else and still didn’t desert you. Even though you thought he did, you were wrong about that. I know it’s difficult for you to trust, difficult for you to relax into the concept of that much loyalty, because I don’t think it’s in Mycroft’s character, but I’m here to tell you it exists and John has it, and I get why you did what you did but the next time you think something like that, remember me saying to you that there is nothing John won’t understand about you. I promise. If I’m wrong about that—never mind, I’m never wrong.” 

Sherlock looked at him steadily, and Eames wasn’t even sure he was getting through. Sherlock was stubborn, Eames supposed. 

Eames sighed and rubbed at his forehead and said, “It was Arthur. Arthur who came up with the plan to save you. Arthur who pulled the trigger. Arthur who executed it with Mycroft every step of the way against us. Arthur likes you. And I’m telling you that because Arthur is…Arthur will let you do any mad, destructive thing you like and still have your back, that’s how Arthur is. And it’s fine, right? I mean, it’s better than fine, it’s who he is, and I love him desperately for that, but I’m saying this to you because I need you to understand what it means. If you ask him for his help, he will come. So I need you not to take advantage of that. I will not let you continue to drag him into these suicide missions where at the end of the day Arthur has to pull the trigger. Arthur likes Renaissance paintings, and our dog, and a good bouillabaisse. He likes hot chocolate, and he likes April in Paris, and he likes to be wrapped in cashmere. He pulls the trigger when he has to, Sherlock, but he doesn’t like it. So I try to make sure he doesn’t have to.” 

Tate came bounding down the stairs and into the lounge and started leaping about excitedly. 

Eames looked at Sherlock and said, “Understood?” 

And Sherlock nodded faintly. 

Arthur appeared in the doorway, with their luggage and his beloved PASIV. “Ready?” he asked, looking stone-faced in that way he had when he was struggling underneath to hold himself together. 

“Yeah.” Eames stood and said to Sherlock, “Good luck raising the baby. We look forward to reading about it on your blog.” 

“Actually,” said Sherlock abruptly, “could I talk to you for a moment, Arthur?” 

***

Arthur looked across at Sherlock and said, “Actually, we both ended up in happy relationships, so there isn’t any need for the _tete-a-tete_ this time, is there?” 

Sherlock waved his hand around. “One of us has a happy relationship. The other of us has—”

“It’s going to be fine,” Arthur said, because he recognized that fear of the new relationship, before you let yourself _trust_. “John loves you a lot. I mean, he’d have to to still be around. You’re no picnic.” 

Sherlock looked across at him. And Sherlock said, “Thank you.” 

Arthur shrugged awkwardly. “I owed you.” 

“You saved my life today.” 

“Right,” said Arthur. “And you saved mine. You gave me Eames. It was only right that I give you John. Or at least your chance with him. That’s what I gave you today, right? Don’t fuck it up. Let him love you. Love him back. Don’t be an idiot.” 

Sherlock, after a moment, smiled a bit and said, “Other people are idiots. I’m very clever.” 

Arthur returned the smiled and replied, “Which is why you’re going to hold onto him.” 

“Never let him go,” Sherlock agreed solemnly. 

Arthur nodded. And then he said, “Enjoy it, okay? It’s going to be better than anything you imagined. So make sure you enjoy it.” 

Sherlock nodded. He said, “Thank you again.” 

And Arthur suspected how very infrequently gratitude was out of Sherlock, so he tried to be gracious when he replied, “Anytime.” 

Then he went downstairs, where Eames and Tate were waiting for him on the pavement. 

“Everything good?” asked Eames. 

Arthur nodded, tired and desperate to just let Eames turn off his brain for a little while. Match-making, thought Arthur, was harder work than dreamsharing was. “I want to go to Heathrow and fly to Siberia,” said Arthur. “Can we just go to Siberia already?” 

“Not a sentence you hear said very often,” said Eames, amused, and curved his hand over the back of Arthur’s neck soothingly and kissed his ear and said, “I love you,” because he knew that sometimes Arthur needed to hear that said. 

Arthur took a deep breath and then hailed a cab and scooped up Tate and they got into the cab together. “Heathrow,” Arthur told the cabbie, and then leaned back and looked at Eames. “So that’s what they’re going to do, huh? Raise the baby together?” 

“They’ll be fine,” Eames said. 

“You had better not go and impregnate any women,” Arthur sighed. 

“You’re no fun,” said Eames. “I think any baby with us for dads would be lucky.” 

***

Sherlock sat in the lounge and let the light die all around him, waiting for John. 

Who would probably walk in and then immediately back out again. It would serve Sherlock right. Because Arthur and Eames were probably right: John wouldn’t appreciate the fact that Sherlock had been so willing to sacrifice himself. But Sherlock had to do what he could to keep John, no matter what. Sherlock had to take his chance here, this chance Arthur had given him. 

Eventually the door opened and closed and Sherlock listened to John’s step on the stairs. 

John switched the light on and looked at him and said, “Why are you sitting here in the dark?” 

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock heard himself say. 

John looked surprised. “What?” 

“I’m really sorry, John. I was so desperate to— I’m not sure that I considered the fact that—” Sherlock stopped babbling and took a deep breath to collect his thoughts. He’d spent long enough sitting in the dark, he should have prepared a speech. “I thought I had taken into account all of the circumstances, but I failed to take into account the fact that you feel about me the same way I feel about you.” There was a moment of silence. “Although, in my defense, that is a relatively new circumstance I’m still adjusting to.” 

John, after a moment, moved over to the sofa and sat next to him. He looked at Sherlock for another very long moment. Then he lifted his hand and used a finger to brush at Sherlock’s curls on his forehead. And then he said softly, “You’re an idiot.” 

Relieved laughter bubbled up inside of Sherlock. “I know.” 

“There is no plan I will ever approve of that doesn’t end with you here, with me,” said John fiercely, shifting his hands to cup Sherlock’s face. “Do you understand me?” 

Sherlock nodded. 

“Especially since I’m going to have a child, and Christ knows how I’m going to raise him or her on my own.” 

“I’m not sure I’m going to be much help raising a baby, John,” Sherlock felt obligated to point out. 

John looked at him, and John smiled. “I don’t know,” said John. “I think we’re both decently clever. I think we’ll be a good team.” 

“Sherlock Holmes and John Watson,” said Sherlock, and wondered why he felt so perilously close to tears, it was all _ridiculous_. 

“A legendary team,” said John. “One for the ages.” 

Sherlock agreed. 

 

_The end_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was quite the challenging journey to put together. How challenging? I submit to you this, which was my original outline for this fic: 
> 
> \--Mag to Baker Street – M will threaten Arthur  
> \--Still do the break-in to try to get into Mag’s head – M shoots S  
> \--they go into S’s subconscious to see who shot him – it’s M  
> \--~~drama~~   
> \--A&E would like to go into M’s head to verify her story –J is against this? M will never agree to it anyway –J says it doesn’t matter  
> \--to get at Magnussen, they need to do three levels – M goes in and shoot S again, which sends him to limbo – J goes into limbo to save him  
> \--who shoots Mag?? Anybody??  
> \--J&S raise the baby together
> 
> Please note how little this fic turned out to be anything like this outline. 
> 
> So I abandoned that outline and then made this outline: 
> 
> \--at J’s request, A/E/J go into S’s head – Mary kicks them out – only E knows Mary shot S  
> \--A&E&S decide to tell J????  
> \--Mary tries to incept J (this gets us in J’s head) – and where S realizes J loves him  
> \--S makes Mag go insane
> 
> And then I abandoned *that* outline in favor of this one: 
> 
> \--S traps him in Limbo (equivalent of shooting him in the head)  
> \--M and the baby – S deduces no baby anymore – M’s head??? How in M’s head??? 
> 
> My favorite part of that last outline is how many question marks it ends in. Guys, I never had any idea what I was doing with this fic. Every time I thought I knew, I'd remember some other plot point hanging out there that made no sense. 
> 
> That said, I think I am happy with how it turned out, and that is huge thanks to arctacuda, who put up with the fact that I was behind schedule for weeks on this thing and constantly demand quick betas of messy chapters. 
> 
> It is also huge thanks to all of you readers, who have been lovely every step of the way, and whose comments often prompted me in certain directions or to close up certain plot holes I hadn't even realized was there. HLV is just a challenge, you guys. I need a little break from dealing with HLV, I've got to be totally honest. 
> 
> That said, there will be two holiday epilogues to this fic, one A/E-centric, one S/J-centric. 
> 
> And, again, THANK YOU. I have the best readers on the whole Internet. ;-)


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